"US will be energy independent by 2035"

What is not to like? The reduced life caused by the extra cycles put on the battery. A mobile battery needs to be small, light and crash worthy. A grid connected battery sitting in a wind farm can take up as much space and be as heavy as it wants to be.

Mike

 

The reduced life is why I'm hesitant about vehicle to grid proposals. The power company can have my EV battery after it hits 80% capacity.

 

You make a perfectly valid point,that shows a basic understanding of battery care and feeding! That said I would make a counter argument.

The first is that we are talking a fairly small draw on the vehicle batteries to supply a fairy short term spike of peak demand. All proper battery preservation techniques can be programmed into the ECU/charging/selling regimen. Yes, you would add some cycles, and that might reduce the effective life of the battery somewhat, but here is the trade off. Let's say that by using such a strategy you effectively cut your life time fuel costs to near zero, or even less than zero. (remember, we are talking about selling at times of peak demand, and ergo high price, and buying back at times of low demand, and ergo low price). Let's assume for the sake of argument you might buy say $500 worth of power per year powering your EV conventionally. if you could (reasonably) reduce that to say $250 by the methods I have describe, in five years. You would have saved ~$1250 worth of power. The question would then be, how much of the EVs battery would you have "given" to the power company? Do home out ahead?

Second, yes, EV batteries are small (by comparison) but because they would (in my scenario) be dual purpose, thier economic cost for both purposes combined would be significantly less than single purpose utility owned batteries.

Finally, with enough EVs the aggregate total KWH capacity of this diverse battery bank could be huge, yielding significant benefits to the utility (not to mention to society at large) as well as to the.

The bottom line, this requires a bit of outside the box thinking, but it is not rocket science. For further information, google "Dennis Hayes of the Stinson/Bullit foundation" and read some of his thoughts on the subject. He is one of the original founders of "earth day"

Have a nice day,

Icarus

 

You make some good points. But there are other reasons why I think this idea will never seriously take hold. Basically, it requires that you keep your car plugged in during the peak demand period. This is roughly 3-6pm (plus or minus an hour or two) on hot sunny summer afternoons. And in most locations this critical time is only a dozen or so days of the year. The rest of the ~350 days there would be no V2G power happening. Very difficult to get people to allow V2G when the normal pattern is that it doesn't happen.

Currently there are approximately zero EVSE that can send power back to the grid out of a few tens of thousands of them (maybe 100,000) in the US. And there isn't even an approved standard for V2G, AFAIK. By the time there could be an accepted standard there will be a million (hopefully) EVSE out there, with all the early adopters (the target market) not owning them.

Lastly, we need to look at the usage patterns for all those with EVs (and PHEVs). Where are they at 3-6pm? They are mostly at work with their cars sitting in company owned parking lots. At my company we have 3 chargers...with 3 more soon to be installed. We have 15 or 20 EVs. Only a fraction of them can be plugged in at a time. As the EVs get more accepted I suspect that people will push the boundaries a bit -- IOW they will be counting on getting fully charged at work in order to easily make it home...so they will have V2G turned off.

So, there you have it. Only a fraction of cars could be plugged in when the grid needs the power. Only some of them will want to allow it. None of the chargers have this feature. It relies largely on company chargers having this feature after all these early adopter companies already installed chargers that don't support this. All for a few days use per year. There are much more economical ways to save power on these few critical summer days -- my company gets notified by the utility and we shut off ~25-50% of the lights and raise the A/C temp a bit...a much more significant effect than a max of 6 cars provided power to the grid...or even 50 in the future. And everyone gets to get home on time.

Mike

 

Like I said, just because the infrastructure isn't in place doesn't mean it can't be!

As I also said, none of the technology is rocket science. An on board inverter/charger, programmed to buy at certain times, (rates) and sell at certain times, all the while, keeping a prescribed amount of minimum charge in the vehicle at any given times.

In the real world, finding (and building) a simple infrastructure of 120 vac 15 amp plug in nearly everywhere (essentially everywhere) is not very hard to do.

More later,

Icarus

 

I disagree with this last part. The utilities expressly forbid sending current back into a 120v outlet...without some kind of special circuit, such as used in a PV solar installation. This is to prevent sending current into the grid during a power outage where a worker may be at risk while working to restore power. Every single V2G installation needs to be specifically wired for this with some new "standard" similar to, but a superset (for example) of J1772.

Sure, all of this "can" be done, there is no technological reason why not. But, IMO, it is a massive amount of tiny little trickles into the grid (each of which needs to be specifically wired for this). And, I submit that only a small fraction of compatible EVs would ever participate on a given day. And that there would be very FEW days in a year when the utility would ever want to activate its use. Thus the payback for all the infrastructure needed is probably negative. Now, maybe in 20-30+ years it is practical.

But, look at the growth rate of hybrids in the last 10 years. From near zero to ~2% of the market. EVs are probably a tougher sell and will take longer to get that big. Maybe with PHEVs it will be bigger in 10 years, but then PHEVs don't have much kwh to provide.

IMO, the same amount of infrastructure dollars could be put to use everday saving energy in other/better ways...such as giving away LED lights, insulating homes and office buildings, replacing single pane windows with double, replace/fix inefficient A/C systems, etc etc. All those things save energy everyday. V2G does not save any energy...it actually loses charging losses and discharge losses...it just helps even out the peaks and valleys of power demand.

Mike

 

Don't overlook some of the hard regulatory limits that most likely make depending on "third party" energy sources prohibited. One of the many licensing requirements for power plant installations is specified reliability, stability and reserve. While a bunch of third party car batteries may indeed provide a reasonable likelyhood of being available, the utility regulations require that the utilities directly manage their assets to ensure the reliability, stability, and reserve margins are guaranteed. That is a regulatory requirement for power plant operation.

Let me give an example. If an east coast hurricane is in the Atlantic, the vast majority of Florida residents with electric cars will disconnect from the grid if there is any chance the utilities would draw battery power out of them. How could the utilities stop that? They could not. Hurricane season is not the time for depending on vehicle power to be available to the grid. That is a LONG season in Florida.

 

You are right to point, but you are missing the bigger picture. Yes, you cannot send reverse current to the grid (legally or safely) through a simple line tape (plugging a current source into the line) be it 120 or 240vac. What is required is a "grid tie" inverter that recognizes the grid, syncs with it, and for safety shuts off if the inverter can't "see" the grid. currently there re no 120 vac grid tie inverters that are UL listed in N. America (that I know of) but the is no technical reason you couldn't build one and get it listed. Installed in the vehicle (or in the house/office etc) would then allow current to flow in either direction with out any additional risk.

As for the "limited" power available from a 15 amp circuit (understanding the idea that a dedicated circuit is required to back feed, so that the combined current in the circuit doesn't exceed the wire rating of the wiring) is ~ 1800 watts. Call it 1500 to build in a head room factor. 1.5 kw of potential peak power, from thousands or millions of potential current sources adds up to a huge potential buffer for peak loads.

From wht I understand, peak loading for the grid is often (not always in A\C climates) a fairly shot term phenom. Look at it this way, how many coffee pots turn in at exactly the same time every morning? (and then go off 15 minutes later?) if I had a Ev plugged in, it could power my coffee maker every morning, delivering ~250 WH to my coffee pot with no net effect on the peak load on the grid. If most of my neighbors did the same thing, wouldn't that have an effect on the peak load on the grid?

Yes, the 250 WH of power would have to come back to the car at some point, but it could hve come in the middle of the night when there was excess capacity available.

The point is, one would not expect to power the lions share of the gird with such a strategy but rather use these EVs to help reduce the peak load (the idle spinning capacity, just waiting for the next toaster or coffee pot is the least efficient, most polluting energy there is, since it is just waiting to power a useful load, rather than actually powering one!) as well as becoming the absorption load for excess solar and wind power.

If one actully digs into the concept and the idea(s) a little deeper one quickly realizes that these re very good ideas for the net ener consumption of the nation, as well as the carbon foot print...and they are not rocket science, but they still require a bit of out of the box thinking.

New tech enables EV fleets to sell electricity to grid | GreenBiz.com

How to Sell Power from Electric Cars Back to the Grid: Scientific American
Vehicle-to-grid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Smart Grid: Selling electricity from EV fleet to PJM: important milestone or dumb idea?

I wish I was smart enough to have thought of this myself, but alas, there are far smarter folks with bigger understanding of the benefits and liabilities of doing so.

Have a sunny day,

Icarus

 

PS to FlaP,

No one (certainly not me) is suggesting that EVs are going to act as a replacement for conventional generating capacity. What is being suggested is EVs CAN act as a buffer for the grid at times of peak demand (as well as an absorption source for excess capacity).

In the event of a major event such as a east coast huricane traditional capacity is still in place. Not to mention that EVs could fill small gaps in grid structure due to localized outages/capacity shortages.

The bottom line, if I could use my car to buy power for motive energy at a reduced price because I can contribute power at a higher price, such that my net transport cost (life cycle) is less (and the global environmental impact is less as well) I would do it in a heart beat.

In today's REAL WORLD, in parts of CA and AZ people are buying power from the utility at below market cost off peak, and selling power from PV at higher than market on peak, resulting in a net zero, or less than zero cost basis. There is no reason (technically) that one cannot do that with EVs as well. The reality is, the grid doesn't care if the power feeding it comes from PV or EVs or wind or coal.

As for the stability issue, grid managers know pretty well at at any given hour what thier loading is likey to be, as well as what thier generating capacity is as well, including non centric PV and wind. With the increased use of smart metering, a utility could know in real time how much battery capacity is available at any given time. Information gathered over time will give pretty good predictable averages for grid engineers to deal with.

The ral beauty of these systems is really to act as the long sought after "battery bank" for solar and wind, to counter the (mostly falicious) argument that PV and wind is "no good because the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine" The reality is that the wind always blows somewhere (especially where good engineering has built wind farms!) and the sun always shines somewhere (especially in predictable locations!) and grid engineers have (and are) figuring out how to make these alternatives fit seamlessly into thier grids. EVs are essentially no different, except that they don't just represent a load, the also CAN represent a current source!

Like I said, it just requires a little bit of imagination and out of the box thinking, and regulatory environment.

Icarus

 

Interesting article about the different (possibly complementary) energy paths US and EU have taken:

The US shale-gas revolution and European renewables: Divergence and cooperation in alternative energy

 

that sounds awful wasteful . After all .... battery pack loss @ 20 percent capacity may still have 90 percent capacity in most of the remaining modules . IOW, most likely old traction packs will be taken apart and only the week modules replaced. That's a lot less wasteful ( or costly ) than getting a new pack.
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With crude oil imports in decline more of our money stays in our country rather than being sent to the ME

 

If America wanted to, it could be energy independent right now. The British Commonwealth Realms, our deepest allies, which include Great Britian, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc., have plenty of energy resources that could back us up as well. If we liberated the oil in the Dakotas, the greedy oilmen up there would want to sell it quick to whoever they could though, and thus send us back into dependency as far as oil is concerned. We need to invest more into research with hydrogen cells instead of putting all our eggs into the shale oil basket.

 

Regarding hydrogen - it's no silver bullet. You may think differently about hydrogen after you Google & read, "the hydrogen hoax".
Additionally - simply saying that we have plenty of energy doesn't make it so. Just because we're able to squeeze more fuel out of Dakota and Montana doesn't mean that we have some kind of a glut. Google any one of a dozen graphs that show worldwide new Oil field discoveries. Surprise surprise ... High quality oil field discoveries peaked in the 1960's. You can't seriously think that a couple new discoveries like we have in the Dakotas is going to offset that huge oil field discovery drop off that's been ongoing for the past 50 or 60 years. But if you want to talk wacky then let's pretend that this lower grade (and costly) fuel truly were some kind of magic bullet.
Let's pretend it actually could offset all of our continually diminishing 70 & 80 year old oil field capacity losses ... and that somehow it magically created a 10% increase in fuel production above what we need in order to run & grow our economy ... and that it increases production so much that it even compensates for our 80 & 90 year old oil fields that are continually drying up. Now factor our make believe 10% fuel production against our ever growing population presently somewhere between what ... six and seven billion? We're gonna need even more fuel than this magic amount - because of our continually increasing population. Or we can talk reality ... that the fracking/discovery has slowed down the serious problem of diminishing cheep/abundant fuel - & given us a little more time to work on the issue.
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In previous discussions of hydraulic fracturing, we found disparate results on surface releases of methane. So, some may be interested in a new (data) paper on the subject

Higher levels of stray gases found in water wells near shale gas sites