<story><title>EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-vehicle-grid-storage</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>Luckily, any degradation can all be predicted ahead of time.&lt;p&gt;A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles.  So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.&lt;p&gt;So a smart algorithm can decide it&amp;#x27;s worth draining the battery back into the grid if the profit to be made is more than 8 cents.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Buuuut&lt;/i&gt;...   Delaying charging till later is free.  So another car owner&amp;#x27;s car might see on the futures market that delaying charging starting from 6pm till 11pm might save a few cents.&lt;p&gt;Obviously that means it&amp;#x27;s most economically efficient for every owner to do grid balancing merely by smartly delaying charges - and in turn price fluctuations will rarely exceed 8 cents.&lt;p&gt;The component that is missing to make this happen is cars which have code to automate this process, and markets in place that have API&amp;#x27;s to let the car buy and sell energy, and futures in energy, by the kwh.   Users need not understand how it works - they just tick the tickbox which says &amp;#x27;charge and discharge smartly to minimize electricity costs&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Today, those markets are typically only open to big players, cars don&amp;#x27;t have a tickbox, and wall chargers typically won&amp;#x27;t let a car put power into the grid.</text></item><item><author>Yizahi</author><text>Aren&amp;#x27;t people wary about using their very expensive car batteries for the grid? E.g. imagine you plug in your phone for the night, but instead of a single top up change it is now constantly discharging and charging again. Lifetime of pocket sized batteries is not too great even now, and in such scenario they will go bust 2-3 times faster, in year instead of 3 or so. Also discharge swings would be probably much bigger. Instead of using say 30% of the battery per day in normal use cycle, maybe not even every day, you will now see multiple 0%-100% charge cycles daily.&lt;p&gt;New battery for small car costs 13-20k$, so if its lifetime will be shortened from I don&amp;#x27;t know, say 10 years, to 3 years, then electric company need to compensate owners accordingly and I highly doubt they will pay even 10% of that sum over 3 years.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>trashtester</author><text>&amp;gt; Buuuut... Delaying charging till later is free.&lt;p&gt;This functionality is already there.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.&lt;p&gt;This is quite much. If you add other infra overhead, feeding power back into the grid is not going to produce much revenue for the individual unless the selling price is maybe 20 cents above the price when charging.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, something that MAY make more sense, is if the car battery can be used to provide power to the owner&amp;#x27;s own house during short price peaks. This might allow some savings even in stable grids, but the killer app would be in grids that have rolling blackouts during high demand periods.&lt;p&gt;And even for grids where blackouts are infrequent, if your car can serve as  large UPS for your house (combined with a large capacitor to keep the power stable), such functionality in the charger may be worth the cost of the hardware for many people. (Bringing the number of units up and hence the cost per unit down over time.)&lt;p&gt;Still, though, for grid stability it is probably much better to use dedicated batteries as part of the grid itself than to use car batteries.</text></comment>
<story><title>EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-vehicle-grid-storage</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>Luckily, any degradation can all be predicted ahead of time.&lt;p&gt;A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles.  So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.&lt;p&gt;So a smart algorithm can decide it&amp;#x27;s worth draining the battery back into the grid if the profit to be made is more than 8 cents.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Buuuut&lt;/i&gt;...   Delaying charging till later is free.  So another car owner&amp;#x27;s car might see on the futures market that delaying charging starting from 6pm till 11pm might save a few cents.&lt;p&gt;Obviously that means it&amp;#x27;s most economically efficient for every owner to do grid balancing merely by smartly delaying charges - and in turn price fluctuations will rarely exceed 8 cents.&lt;p&gt;The component that is missing to make this happen is cars which have code to automate this process, and markets in place that have API&amp;#x27;s to let the car buy and sell energy, and futures in energy, by the kwh.   Users need not understand how it works - they just tick the tickbox which says &amp;#x27;charge and discharge smartly to minimize electricity costs&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Today, those markets are typically only open to big players, cars don&amp;#x27;t have a tickbox, and wall chargers typically won&amp;#x27;t let a car put power into the grid.</text></item><item><author>Yizahi</author><text>Aren&amp;#x27;t people wary about using their very expensive car batteries for the grid? E.g. imagine you plug in your phone for the night, but instead of a single top up change it is now constantly discharging and charging again. Lifetime of pocket sized batteries is not too great even now, and in such scenario they will go bust 2-3 times faster, in year instead of 3 or so. Also discharge swings would be probably much bigger. Instead of using say 30% of the battery per day in normal use cycle, maybe not even every day, you will now see multiple 0%-100% charge cycles daily.&lt;p&gt;New battery for small car costs 13-20k$, so if its lifetime will be shortened from I don&amp;#x27;t know, say 10 years, to 3 years, then electric company need to compensate owners accordingly and I highly doubt they will pay even 10% of that sum over 3 years.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Maxion</author><text>This can be done by using a smart AC charger.&lt;p&gt;In europe (At least) the company Easee makes AC chargeres that are WiFi &amp;#x2F; 4G enabled. In Sweden (And Norway) you can connect them to a service like Tibber, which allows you to automatically enable&amp;#x2F;disable charging with the electricity price, assuming you have a spot price electricity contract.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tibber.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;product&amp;#x2F;easee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tibber.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;product&amp;#x2F;easee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Easee chargers also have a pretty bitching API, so you can also make your own automations using e.g. home assistant or what have you.</text></comment>