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Transportation Power

Volkwagen Touts Massive Energy Storage Potential of Vehicle-to-Grid Electric Car Batteries (reuters.com) 101

Posted by EditorDavid from the power-from-the-people dept.
Volkswagen's chief strategist Michael Jost predicts their vehicle-to-grid electric car batteries could open up a new business opportunity: selling their electricity back to the power grid during peak demand. Reuters reports: "By 2025 we will have 350 gigawatt hours worth of energy storage at our disposal through our electric car fleet. Between 2025 and 2030 this will grow to 1 terawatt hours worth of storage," Jost told journalists in Berlin. "That's more energy than is currently generated by all the hydroelectric power stations in the world. We can guarantee that energy will be used and stored and this will be a new area of business."

The German carmaker is not alone in looking into this field. German utility E.ON has been working with Japanese carmaker Nissan to develop so-called vehicle-to-grid services.
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Volkwagen Touts Massive Energy Storage Potential of Vehicle-to-Grid Electric Car Batteries More

Volkwagen Touts Massive Energy Storage Potential of Vehicle-to-Grid Electric Car Batteries

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  • As in: Will they give me a new car every 2-10 years? Or replace the batteries?
    And compensate the degraded range?
    On top of using my energy storage services!

    Otherwise, fuck off!

    • No and they'll also only pay you 5 cents for the same amount of electricity they charged you $1.00 to use to charge your battery in the first place.
      • When you buy electricity at a location you are paying for generation, transport and local lines charges. So if you sell it back at the same location you will be paid (probably) for generation. As from you it needs to be transported and you also need the local power lines and transformers etc. Typically Generation is between 1/4 and 1/2 of the final cost to you, when you sell back you are replacing a generator and that is what you should be paid for.

        Now the good news. Power costs different amount to produc
      • Nope, Ovo energy in the UK is already doing V2G as cars with Chadamo connectors (Nissan leaf), they promise pretty much free charging for your car (or a small profit) if you allow them to take some charge from your car. They give you a free charger, £75 electric credit, 30p per kWh for power used from your car.

    • What we need, and maybe will get, is a battery-swapping "recharge" of the electric car batteries so that people rent, rather than buy the batteries in their cars. That way, you don't much care about the life of the battery, while the other recent news, that (who was it, Musk again?) recently (in the last few months) patented a "million mile battery" for electric cars.

      So you're an entrepreneur with big bucks looking to invest, and you buy a stock of "standard" batteries that fit "most" battery-swappable EV

      • The problem here is the exact limitation you specified in your arguement. There are NO STANDARDS in the EV marketplace, as it's in it's infancy. Different manufacturers have different ideas about how to build these things, and this precludes any type or size of battery being developed like we use for dry cells. The other is lineups at re-charging/swapping stations in large cities, where these vehicles would have their biggest fan base and heaviest use. Someone who is short a few bucks and cannot afford
      • What you wish for is already being used as a model by some manufacturers of EVs, and has been the case for at least six or seven years, maybe even a decade.
        • That is, batteries effectively being rented. Since the cells are already standard form factors, that's covered too.

        • I wish for it to be implemented such that you can drive into a "gas station" pretty much anywhere and get a battery swap in about 5 minutes or less. That's what EV's need in order to "take over" from ICE cars, that and decent range at an affordable price.

    • If you have right to repair laws you don't have to limit yourself to what they allow you to do. Then it's simply a matter of whether you make enough money to pay for a new battery.

    • No shit; beancounters eyeballing other people's resources... news at fucking 11.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Providing the price is right you'll be quite happy to use your car's charge to feed the net.

    • The point would be: the car owner can save/make money with this. Example: we have solar that generates excess energy. Currently, we sell this power to the power company for a pittance, because everyone else also has excess. It would be far better to use it ourselves, via battery storage. And there is this huge battery sitting in our EV. So use it, down to some minimum based on your driving needs.

      Or go farther and collect money from the power company, by selling power when they really need it.

      This makes a lo

    • You will get paid for the electricity going back to the grid, although in the USA thanks to corporatist lawmakers you will probably only get paid by having your meter spin backwards. With a fair billing system you would get paid the current rate at the time you supplied power to the grid, so you'd actually make money. The low rate charge and discharge activity at the top of your battery does little to compromise its lifespan, it's deep and or fast [dis]charges which reduce battery life.

  • ...they don't have such vehicles.

    • Not yet for VW but Nissan Leaf can do V2G already because the chadamo connected system already has a standard in place. CCS (almost the rest of the EV world's charging system) does not yet have a complete and ratified standard for V2G yet

  • Wouldn't I want to keep my storage? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday March 15, 2020 @11:02AM (#59832552)
    I mean, my gas tank technically stores gas, but I kind of want the gas in there in case I need to go driving.

    I'd say this might work with the aging population of Baby Boomers, who might have a car sitting around doing nothing, but they'll mostly be dead in 25 years.

    And of course unless you can make a battery that degrades slower than the mechanical parts of the car while being used as power storage then this idea won't really work.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by olddoc ( 152678 )
      Exactly! What is my reward for letting my car run low so I can't drive? Will they buy back my energy so I make a profit?

      • Exactly! What is my reward for letting my car run low so I can't drive? Will they buy back my energy so I make a profit?

        Very good point, but I wouldn't be selling that electricity back anyway, given that this would increase the number of charge cycles on my battery. The last thing you want to do is cycle the battery more, given that it will decrease the range sooner, and increase the risk of a failure happening sooner rather than later.

        • If your car powers your home during peak electricity demand, and this reduces your electric bill, then that could be putting your batteries to better use than just being on standby most of the time for your transportation needs. Or if the grid pays you for the use of your battery, then the batteries could cost you less over their lifetime. Presumably you can plan your car trips, and your car could know how much energy it needs to have available for the next day or two, and allocate the rest for grid use.

      • Exactly! What is my reward for letting my car run low so I can't drive?

        That's presumptuous. Who's to say that your car will run low, and won't just skim the top 20% off its charge? The vast majority of cars trips don't come anywhere near needing even 1/3rd of the battery available in any given day. Your car will be fine.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Teun ( 17872 )
          +1 Insightful.
        • But what about the trips that do require more than 20%? And people are greedy as hell, have you been living under a rock? People only care about them self, fuck the need of anyone else

          • I'd say the remaining 80% charge would suffice for your "more than 20%" trip. And if you're planning in a longer trip, turn off the grid storage feature?

      • Exactly! What is my reward for letting my car run low so I can't drive? Will they buy back my energy so I make a profit?

        Your reward is a few cents for something that cost hundreds of dollar to fill up your battery for your commute. Let alone the wear and tear of your batteris.

      • You as the owner of the vehicle has the power to set limits of how much they can take and no-one would be stupid enough to allow a large drain on the power.

        • [...] no-one would be stupid enough to allow a large drain on the power.

          I really like your optimism, but disposable cups intended for the distribution of hot liquids come with a warning on them that advises recipients that their contents may be hot since some recipients managed to burn themselves because they did not make this deduction themselves. So yes, if such a scheme becomes widely available, there will be the most delicious stories about greedy morons stranding themselves with empty batteries.

    • Re:Wouldn't I want to keep my storage? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday March 15, 2020 @01:23PM (#59832838) Journal
      Imagine that you could buy gas at $1/gal, but then sell it at $2/gal. In addition, imagine that you only sell 1/4-1/3 of what you have on a normal basis. And if a storm is coming, or there is an outage, no gas is sold. And the degradation is such that you can fill your tank 40,000x. IOW, you can use it for 40,000 days, or have roughly 100 years worth of filling it up
      NOW, how does that sound?

      At my house, I can buy electricity at .08/kwh / nighttime and sell it back for .16 / kwh from 1400-1800. If we do 30 KWH / day, that is ~$800 / year.
      • I have panels and I "sell" the juice back to my utility. Oddly, my utility has adjusted the system so I pay them, not they pay me.You are dreaming if you think the utilities are going to pay large numbers of customers for juice. Once a sufficient number of customers buy in to the idea, watch the rate they buy the juice back drop. My utility was much more generous when I first put in the panels, and it keeps getting worse every year. I looked at the initial contract after the completely revamped the deal and
        • What utility are you with? Some of them are JUST plain crazy. Here in Denver Basin, Colorado, we have Xcel that is so-so, but REI which services from south Denver region and below, is crazy and doing JUST what you say.

          Can not believe how some of these CEO are. MBAs with a serious lack of intelligence.
        • so the utilities didn't have pay. I remember them very clearly because of the advertisements they ran to ensure they'd get passed.

          There were a bunch of old folk sitting around a table talking about something scary. Then at the end there was a "Vote no on proposition such and such". No explanation was ever given about what the proposition was or did.

          The law passed, and now if you've got solar you don't get anything for the excess power you generate.
        • Wow, who'd athunk that if supply is large, price might be low. Have you called your local economics professor to let them know?
      • Is 800 after the cost of the system needed? What about taxes? Also 0,16 USD per kwh is more than what i pay for electricity in Sweden.
        • That is what we pay from 1400-1800. 4 hours. Otherwise, it is .12 and then .08. And sweden has cheap hydro and nuclear. America is blowing our edge by pushing expensive energy with wind/solar/nat gas. Geothermal, hydro, wind/solar, and nukes would be cheaper and better.
        • BTW, Sweden does NOT look all that cheap [statista.com]

          $800 was about how much we would take in. A powerwall in America costs somewhere around $7000 (installed). That is why I suggested that this becomes doable if utilities/state put up money towards it. If between the 2 of them, they put up say $3500, which means 3500 to be done by the building owner. Several years and it is paid for.

      • At my house, I can buy electricity at .08/kwh / nighttime and sell it back for .16 / kwh from 1400-1800. If we do 30 KWH / day, that is ~$800 / year.

        And how much did it cost to set up?
        And for how many years can you guarantee the pricing will stay the same?

  • I am pretty sure Musk has pointed this out for -- what -- ten years now. At least.

    I guess this articles is all about paying reverence to the Old Guard so I guess OK.

  • When did we go from "car batteries are too heavy, expensive and small to provide reasonable range" to "car batteries have so much excess capacity that they can fuel your car, house and your little dog" ?

    • When did we go from "car batteries are too heavy, expensive and small to provide reasonable range" to "car batteries have so much excess capacity that they can fuel your car, house and your little dog" ?

      These are not exactly mutually exclusive. For the second use, the batteries don't have to move so the fact they are heavy doesn't matter. For the first use, moving a car, your statement isn't fully true, but it is true that the weight of the batteries is the fundamental limit on range and performance. Battery driven cars are great for short ranges because the motors are much lighter than combustion engines for the same power. For longer ranges, energy density of the power source becomes more important

    • When did we go from "car batteries are too heavy, expensive and small to provide reasonable range"

      There's a simple answer: That hasn't been a problem for a long time. People in general just thought it was. Electric cars are slowly becoming the norms for buses and taxis, people who are in the 99th percentile of those who need range, and yet they work fine for them.

      The solution to anyone who has had range anxiety in the past 5 years is to slap them across the face and say "Don't be a bitch, use your brain!".

    • To be honest, I tend to agree. OTOH, the powerwalls esp. with utility and maybe even state/feds kicking in some $, make a LOT of sense for parts of the nation where there is a differential in day/nighttime pricing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's because people can't think rationally about what size battery they need.

      They want 300 miles if range even if they only need it a few times a year. They will pay a lot of money, tens of thousands, just to save an hour or two a year.

      So there is huge potential to use that excess capacity the rest of the year.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      When did we go from "car batteries are too heavy, expensive and small to provide reasonable range" to "car batteries have so much excess capacity that they can fuel your car, house and your little dog" ?

      Marketting.

  • After my Jetta TDI secretly spewed excess pollution for 10 years I'm not inclined to believe any claims made by VW's leadership.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lenski ( 96498 )

      ....And my TDI was in the shop for $800+ about every 13 months after the warranty expired. Some $25-50 part would croak but they would only replace an entire subsystem. Total scam.

      I'm glad for the buyout, it allowed me to get out from under the maintenance hog.

      No more Vdubs for me.

  • "...1 terawatt hours worth of storage ... That’s more energy than is currently generated by all the hydroelectric power stations in the world."
    That's a meaningless statement: he is comparing watt-hours (energy) to watts (power). Two totally different units. Not a good sign when your "Chief Strategist" doesn't understand the basic science of energy.

    If he had said, "That’s more energy than is currently generated by all the hydroelectric power stations in the world ->in an hour/day/week-." the

    • Yes, but we can assume that he meant that the batteries can produce as much power as all the hydroelectric power stations in the world. According to Wikipedia, the world's installed hydroelectric capacity is 1.6 TW (as of 2014), which is comparable to the power produced by 1 TWh worth of batteries if they discharge in about half an hour.

  • ...but totally sucks ass in the real world

  • Problem is EVs shift the electricity peak period (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday March 15, 2020 @02:00PM (#59832948)
    The problem is that people are imagining they would charge up their EVs overnight (when prices are lowest), drive them to work during the day, and when they returned home the residual charge would help dampen the electricity consumption peak which hits between about 4 pm - 9 pm. Then repeat the cycle, recharging the EVs overnight as demand drops. Unfortunately, that's not what's going to happen.
    • Average household electricity use [shrinkthatfootprint.com] is about 12,000 kWh per year for the U.S. That's about 33 kWh per day.
    • Annual miles driven [thecarcrashdetective.com] is about 13500 miles. That's 40 miles per day.
    • The Tesla 3 uses about 26 kWh per 100 miles [fueleconomy.gov]. Factor in charging efficiency (only about 85% of the kWh on your home's meter makes it into the EV battery), and that's about 30.6 kWh per 100 miles.
    • At 40 miles driven per person per day, the average EV will require 12.24 kWh per daily recharge for each driver..
    • Figure an average two drivers per household, and that's 24.5 kWh per day to top off the EVs (whether they own one or two, this is the average).
    • Now take that 33 kWh per day for a home and distribute it by about a 2:3 ratio from 8 hours off-peak to 12 hours on-peak [eia.gov]. That's roughly 8.25 kWh from 10pm to 6 am, and 24.75 kWh from 6 am to 10 pm.
    • Add 24.5 kWh to charge the EVs during the 10 pm to 6 am overnight period. That bumps the 10pm-6am period up from 8.25 kWh to 32.75 kWh.

    Overnight becomes the new electricity consumption peak. And thus prices are highest overnight. The opposite of how it is right now.

    Meaning there is no longer any need to use EVs for electricity storage because the power generation needed to recharge all those EVs overnight, means there is more than enough power generation during the rest of the day. In fact this will be compounded by solar, which only generates during the day - precisely when we'll need electricity the least. There will be so much excess power generation during daytime that we'll have to scale back production unless we can find a place to put all that extra electricity. The EV batteries would seem like a great place to put it, except they're all driving around or parked at work during the day.

    You can play around with the numbers for other countries too. The first two links I sourced give electricity consumption and miles driven per person for other countries.

  • I can see the value (Score:3)

    by denbesten ( 63853 ) on Sunday March 15, 2020 @02:19PM (#59833012)

    ... if one has a time-of-use electric rate structure (e,g. noon to 8 PM costs twice as much midnight to 8:00 AM).

    A Tesla 3s has 75 kwh power capacity. If you return home with 20% charge remaining, you have the capacity of a Powerwall (13.5 kwh). Since a Powerwall can nominally power a house for a day, there should be no problem powering your house during the expensive early-evening rates and then recharging the vehicle with cheap over-night power.

  • Aren't a lot of EV batteries just rented from the car manufacturer even if you own the car? I wonder what the license agreement says about this as you're degrading their battery beyond the expected use.

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