Bidirectional Charging May Be Required On EVs Soon Due To New California Law (electrek.co) 40
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law giving the California Energy Commission the authority to require bidirectional charging in electric vehicles (EVs) in the future -- although no timeline is set. Bidirectional charging allows EVs to not only charge from the grid but also supply electricity back to the grid, potentially enhancing grid resiliency, supporting renewable energy, and reducing peak electricity demand. Electrek reports: The idea started in 2023 when state Senator Nancy Skinner introduced a bill which would require EVs to have bidirectional charging by 2027. As this bill made its way through the legislative process, it got watered down from that ambitious timeline. So the current form of the bill, which is now called SB 59, took away that timeline and instead gave the California Energy Commission (CEC) the go-ahead to issue a requirement whenever they see it fit. The bill directs the CEC, the California Air Resources Board, and the California Public Utilities Commission to examine the use cases of bidirectional charging and give them the power to require specific weight classes of EVs to be bidirectional-capable if a compelling use case exists.
The state already estimates that integrating EVs into the grid could save $1 billion in costs annually, so there's definitely a use case there, but the question is the cost and immediacy of building those vehicles into the grid. The reason this can't be done immediately is that cars take time to design, and while adding bidirectional charging to an EV isn't the most difficult process, it also only really becomes useful with a whole ecosystem of services around the vehicle.
And that ecosystem has been a bit of a hard sell so far. It's all well and good to tell someone they can make $500/year by selling energy to the grid, but then you have to convince them to buy a more expensive charging unit and keep their car plugged in all the time, with someone else managing its energy storage. Some consumers might push back against that, so part of CEC's job is to wait to pull the trigger until it becomes apparent that people are actually interested in the end-user use case for V2G -- otherwise, no sense in requiring a feature that nobody is going to use.
The state already estimates that integrating EVs into the grid could save $1 billion in costs annually, so there's definitely a use case there, but the question is the cost and immediacy of building those vehicles into the grid. The reason this can't be done immediately is that cars take time to design, and while adding bidirectional charging to an EV isn't the most difficult process, it also only really becomes useful with a whole ecosystem of services around the vehicle.
And that ecosystem has been a bit of a hard sell so far. It's all well and good to tell someone they can make $500/year by selling energy to the grid, but then you have to convince them to buy a more expensive charging unit and keep their car plugged in all the time, with someone else managing its energy storage. Some consumers might push back against that, so part of CEC's job is to wait to pull the trigger until it becomes apparent that people are actually interested in the end-user use case for V2G -- otherwise, no sense in requiring a feature that nobody is going to use.
increased fire risk? (Score:2)
So if the government mandates this, do they take the engineering risk?
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No, government mandates do not work that way in consumer items. At best they can simply remove consumer protections related to these sorts of items, i.e. mandate that judicial arm of the government will not pursue any remedies in case of such fires.
Re: increased fire risk? (Score:2)
Executive seeks remedies, judicial interprets.
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Poor phraseology on my part. I didn't mean executive not pursuing cases, but legislative not taking up cases brought by consumers themselves. I.e. civil cases executive is not a party to.
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They mandate airbags, seat belts, and emissions controls.
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If the government mandates this, will they be paying for the replacement of the EV battery and charging circuits?
Cause EV's have limited life spans (heck ultimately the battery packs for EV's resemble hundreds of AA-sized Lithum cells instead of larger "Lantern battery" sized cells (6V lantern batteries are basically just 4 1.5v cells in a longer length than D batteries.)
But I'll give the government mandate a chance. Tell EV manufacturers they MUST standardize on ONE replaceable EV battery type. Then you on
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Why would there be increased fire risk from bi-directional charging as opposed to normal charging which you are already doing if you have an EV? Do electrons flow differently the other direction?
Fantastic (Score:2, Redundant)
EV batteries are proving to outlast cars; this is an excellent additional use for them.
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Good lord, how many crashes are you in that don't damage the battery to get there?
Or are you using cars that rust through in less than ten years or something?
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Good lord, how many crashes are you in that don't damage the battery to get there?
Or are you using cars that rust through in less than ten years or something?
Electic cars use far smaller quantities of steel than ICE vehicles and it's the same kind of steel as ICE vehicles are made of so it will rust at the same rate in both types of motor vehicle. Data suggest that EV batteries could last 20 years or more at their current average degradation rate, so, quite a lot more than the 'less than ten years' you are insinuating. Meanwhile, the average lifespan of an ICE engine motor vehicle is 12-15 years which is roughly the the same as the realistic service life of an E
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>Data suggest that EV batteries could last 20 years or more at their current average degradation rate
I'm sure there's "some" data that "suggests" that batteries last that long.
In real world on the other hand, observations so far is that batteries need significant refurbishing or total replacement after a decade and a half at the latest. Most require it much earlier that that because of hits to battery from road surface, or a single module failure in a battery that cannot be reasonably serviced to exchang
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EV batteries are proving to outlast cars;
[citation needed].
I question if that is true. I have cars 20-30 years old that still run good, lithiums don't last that long on paper. This site explains some of chemistry and characteristics related to lifespan. http://web.archive.org/web/201... [archive.org]
Lithiums have a limited lifespan based on # of cycles, with it decreased by many factors including temperature (too hot or too low), depth of discharge, charging rate, and end voltage. The batteries are also only useful until they can only produce 80% of origina
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> I have cars 20-30 years old that still run good
Generally speaking, how long a car lasts is determined by miles driven rather than age. For a light passenger vehicle the lifespan is typically 150K-200K miles.
So if we use that metric EV batteries are already there. 200K miles divided by a modest 250 miles per charge cycle is only 800 cycles, and since NCM cells used in most vehicles on the road today are good for over 1000 that easily puts them above the typical lifespan of the vehicle. LFP cells in newe
The EV battery myth (Score:2)
Here in Asia we have EV cars that have been running around for 10 years.
Batteries are down to 20~30%, even with all that smart battery management.
So in practice, EV's don't last for 20-30 years, especially if you are planning to fill and drain them every day.
Pay me for it. (Score:3)
If anyone wants to use my batteries to supply the grid, they should be paying me for it. After all, it's my equipment. I paid for it and I need to maintain it. Increased charging and discharging cycles will wear the battery down quicker than it otherwise would and you should compensate me for it accordingly. What is it that if I'm using the grid I'm required to pay standing charges but when you want to use my "grid", you intend to pay me nothing?
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Isn't that basically how it works, at least if you are getting charged by the spot rate. In my country, price of electricity changes every hour. Fill your batter on the cheap, and sell back to grid at profit.
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That's not entirely true.
The rates for solar are different, because with so many people (and grid scale providers) having solar, all that power is available when it's least needed. So yes, the net billing tariff for pure solar is lower because the power straight from the solar panels is simply worth less due to oversupply.
However, the net billing tariff is HIGHER for power provided later in the evening, when solar tapers off and demand increases. This incentivizes battery storage and REDUCES the ROI on syst
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In my country, electricity price is flat. Well, OK, tiered, based on monthly consumption, but for each tier the price is flat no matter the time of day.
Also, as a prosumer, you sell electricity back to the grid at exactly the same price you buy it, therefore the net gain/loss is zero.
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That merely means that someone else is taking on the cost of volatility and and getting paid premium for taking on said volatility.
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Fill your batter on the cheap, and sell back to grid at profit.
You'd probably never make enough profit to offset the additional wear on the battery. If you really want to sell power back to the grid, a PV system would offer a much better ROI, with the added benefit that you wouldn't ever have to worry about getting in your car and discovering that some of your range has been unexpectedly sucked up.
TBH, bidirectional charging isn't even a feature I'd care much about for my own use. As the topic has come up since it's hurricane season on the east coast, I've joked with
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You'd probably never make enough profit to offset the additional wear on the battery. If you really want to sell power back to the grid, a PV system would offer a much better ROI, with the added benefit that you wouldn't ever have to worry about getting in your car and discovering that some of your range has been unexpectedly sucked up.
You can set the maximum discharge for V2G/V2H in the car settings ("e.g. do not discharge below 60%").
As for actually reaping the costs, if you can spend the electricity at h
Re: Pay me for it. (Score:5, Informative)
They do. When they need to pull power off of home batteries you get paid ~4-5x the peak rate that you would pay to run off the grid during peak hours (~$0.67/kwh for me), which is much better than the usual ~$0.05/kwh generation I get with NEM2.0
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This is just another fee for the privilege of living in California. PAY UP!
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Literally everyone will pay you for this. That is how it works.
Nope. (Score:2)
Nope.
It's my car, you're not authorised to wear my battery and reduce my car's driving capacity as you see fit, no matter how little impact that is.
If you did this, I can quite imagine it'll be about a day before someone offers a cable adaptor that allows only one-way charging regardless of what the charger wants to do.
Imagine if they said "Hey, we'll let you use municipal water in your home, but just be aware that we can suck it back and empty your sinks, tanks and pipes any time we like if there's a water
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Unless you're closing your main every time you're done using water, they can and do use the residual pressure in your system as a 'ballast' of sorts to balance pressure on your street.
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Water is practically non-compressible so your ballast theory makes little sense to me. Most big water pumps have air ballasts, mainly so they last longer but I've rarely seen them in homes. Cut a house water supply line in two and no water will come out from the house. With a gas line, some gas will come out of the house line because gas is compressible, not water.
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Unless you're closing your main every time you're done using water, they can and do use the residual pressure in your system as a 'ballast' of sorts to balance pressure on your street.
What BS. Unless you have a compressed air reserviour connected to your system that generally won't happen. In fact my water company is very touchy about the possibility of water from properties flowing back into their system (in case it has been contaminated) and require non-return valves on cetain features.
Some may be willing if compensated properly... (Score:2)
It all depends how much they pay and how much your battery costs...
You may even go for it just in the last year before you buy a new car...
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Now why would you think you aren't in control for this / being compensated for the use of it? Literally everywhere where such a system has been trialled it has been quite lucrative.
And even if you don't want to opt in to use it you should be happy for the bi-directional charging requirement since it's a minimum requirement to be able to actually use your house off the grid. Imagine sitting in the dark without power knowing you've got a battery big enough to keep your lights on and your meat from spoiling ri
They didn't think this one through (Score:2)
Peak electrical demand is usually during the hottest part of the day when there's the biggest need for air conditioning, which also happens to be when most people are at work. So, who are all these people that just leave their EVs plugged in at home all day and never go anywhere?
Will work same for cars plugged at work... (Score:2)
They are at work and their car is plugged there so it can work the same way...
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That's also peak solar output as well.
Google "California duck curve"
5pm - 9pm is the peak
Midday there is excessive generation, risking grid instability.
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Peak electrical demand is usually during the hottest part of the day when there's the biggest need for air conditioning, which also happens to be when most people are at work. So, who are all these people that just leave their EVs plugged in at home all day and never go anywhere?
The people who drove to work and left the EV plugged in to recharge? Presumably the charging spots will also have an average occupancy rate, even over the hottest time of the day which would make that fleet of charging cars useful for grid storage? Personally I'm not completely sold on this idea but I suppose it could work.
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I just looked out the window, it's peak time now. There are a *LOT* of cars in driveways. Why isn't every single person somewhere else? How could it be that some people are still home! I guess we'll never know. We won't know about shift workers, we won't know about multiple family cars. We won't know about days off, we certainly don't know about work from home. And there's absolutely no chance that any EV owner would have have the ability to plug their car in at work. Oh except for me, I'm special. But we'l
Not Only the Grid (Score:2)
If the car is rigged to allow feedback to the grid, then it should also be able to act in place of an emergency generator. Generators to power the whole house are usually 4 cylinder driven and mounted on a concrete pad, coming in at about $10K or so. Having your EV do that as a bonus to owning it could elevate your living situation more toward "upper middle class" since few people actually buy such generators due to this expense. Having the house set up to accept such power could also allow the delive
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Generators to power the whole house are usually 4 cylinder driven and mounted on a concrete pad, coming in at about $10K or so.
Whole-house generators are a luxury because you really don't need something that big just to run the essentials (fridge, lights, phone chargers, etc.).
While it's possible to install an inverter in the EV I own (a Chevy Bolt), I'd rather run my portable generator and still have my car to use as a car rather than tethered to my house in the event of an outage. Yeah, I'll probably get some silly looks driving it to the gas station to get fuel for the generator, but such is life.
Certainly, for people where the
Predictability (Score:2)
Does this mean that you could think you've left your car to charge, only to get to it and the battery is all but flat instead? That doesn't sound like a very good selling point.