Ford, BMW, Honda to steer bidirectional EV charging standard

If you want to gauge the automotive industry's temperature on electric vehicles, just take a look at the volume of collaborative projects they're all working on, including most recently an initiative from Ford, BMW and Honda's American arm to develop a standard for bidirectional vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging. The trio will …

[Ideasource]

Well I think people in warmer temperate zones but very much like it as an alternative to grid power.

If your climate supports it then you don't need air conditioning or heating running while you're gone.

So power only matters if you're there. And even then you still don't need power if there's daylight out.

Electronic entertainment is still but a small subset of all the activities available for human to enjoy.

[Pascal Monett]

So, I gather that you don't have a refrigerator or a freezer ?

[Ideasource]

Stop at the market on the way home. Cook dinner. Wake up go to work. Breakfast and lunch eaten out during the workday. Nonperishables at home for snacking.

[Casca]

So no family or pets...

[Ideasource]

Plenty of single people out there.

And they matter just as much as the families.

[Jimmy2Cows]

So it's sleep, eat, work, eat, repeat. You might be happy with that, but most people want more out of life.

[Ideasource]

During leisure Time you you have all the flexibility in the world so no planning necessary.

I never meant to imply there would be no leisure time.

[Ideasource]

Or you could keep a 12v compressor freezer/fridge in the car.

[Wellyboot]

Why not just order pizza & sleep under your desk, you'd not need the house and car then! /sarc

[Ideasource]

Well I guess you could, depending on how discreet you can be.

But I snore loudly so that didn't work for me.

I did stack quite a bit of money when I was younger urban car camping near the job site.

Allowed me to save up enough money to to take year-long sabbaticals from working with full resources. Allowing me to invest that time and energy into my own developments.

Employment is to scrape personal capital with which to invest in your own life experience , personal development and business ventures.

Was able to bootstrap my own company. Was quite profitable until I decided I was completely bored.

So I liquidated it and started a new project.

I was never one for letting personal creations run amok. I prefer to put away my toys/tools before I start a new game/project

By game I mean any purposeful endeavor involving risk and and potential gain towards a desired objective.

[Captain Scarlet]

Or take public transport anywhere, I don't want some smelly person squashing my bananas!

[Dagg]

As we are in spring we are in a temperate stage and don't need heating or cooling.

However we run our washing machine, dishwasher and cook lunches in the middle of the day to use the free energy from the solar panels.

[Anonymous Coward]

Voila!

Proof that we're moving to a self-imposed, energy-scarce future where every single electron will need to be scavenged, just to keep the lights on.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Voila!

Or maybe we're moving to a future where we make more efficient use of resources instead of wasting them as profligately.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Voila!

Or it's a start in freeing ourselves from energy delivery monopolies. The more home-to-home sharing, the less need for the big power company to balance varying local production and consumption.

Batteries age by use and calendar time. For occasional drivers, this could be a little revenue from a car battery pack that would otherwise be depreciating unused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Voila!

Where do you think the energy is going to come from in the first place? Bidirectional energy flows will require *more* reliance on electricity providers both in terms of consumption monitoring/balancing and their delivery infrastructure.

[DryBones]

Re: Voila!

Solar + storage. Duh. Someone hasn't been paying attention.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Voila!

Yeah, solar is going to be very useful when you come back home from work in the evening.

Especially in winter when the sun sets before you leave work.

The only viable solution for all these new vehicles is nuclear. Preferably the Thorium kind.

[Kristian Walsh]

Re: Voila!

If you stop reading before the end of a sentence, it will lead to you making silly comments.

“Solar + storage”. The last word was important.

[SundogUK]

Re: Voila!

Storage will never replace base-load, which is the issue here.

[Wellyboot]

Re: Voila!

Pascal was quite possibly referring to the fact that the storage requirements in northern Europe come midwinter will be astronomic.

Sunny Madrid & Rome (40/41N) share their latitide with New York, The rest of Europe extends well north of the Arctic circle where it stays dark for months.

During mid-summer I get 16h of daylight, mid-winter it's nearer 8h* with the Sun low in the sky and my solar barely covering it's own running cost.

*With the temp hovering around freezing I burn 1.5Mw/h during that month just on heating my home.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Voila!

You just need a big fleet of EVs to store all that energy you get during the summer. That should tide you over until spring.

[chriskno]

Re: Voila!

Haven't you heard about wind turbines? We get lots of wind, and storage technologies are developing rapidly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Voila!

Haven't you heard about wind turbines? We get lots of wind, and storage technologies are developing rapidly.

The wind doesn't blow all of the time, hence why it's not a replacement for base load.

Also, storage is in no fit state to cover the still periods.

[Wellyboot]

Re: Voila!

I also want a 'Mr. Fusion' powered car :)

[MyffyW]

Re: Voila!

Join the queue, Wellyboot :-)

[MyffyW]

Re: Voila!

@Pascal, upvote for nuclear power. Kudos for the Thorium reference (which makes this a very long term solution).

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Voila!

"Solar + storage"

For a flat-dweller there's going to be no solar to store. Even a south-facing flat with permission to hang panels on the exterior wall (and there won't be many of those) it's not going to amount to much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get it

ChargeScape was formed to bring V2G charging into the mainstream, which will in turn let the grid sap some stored EV battery juice at times of high demand (with permission), as well as management options that'll restrict EV charging to "grid-friendly" times of day.

Who in their right mind would allow the electricity company to drain their EV's battery rendering the car useless should they require it in an emergency? Have the recent forest fires and floods passed you by?

[mark l 2]

Re: Don't get it

As the quote mentioned its 'some' of the battery, not to run it to empty.

I saw a Technology Connections video on Youtube a months or so ago where he managed to power his whole house using his EV for a day or two without using any mains electric, and i think he showed you can specify how much of the battery you wanted to use before it would stop supplying it. So you can still have enough remaining to use the EV to drive.

I could see this being useful if you live in a place where you get a lot of power outages or even just have a cabin/caravan etc off grid and want to use your EV to power things rather than a noisy generator.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't get it

Still going to keep a UPS hooked up, though, just in case power fails when the car's not around..

[MachDiamond]

Re: Don't get it

"I saw a Technology Connections video on Youtube a months or so ago where he managed to power his whole house using his EV for a day or two without using any mains electric"

Alec powered his fridge, coffee maker and some lights from the car, not the whole house. To power the whole house would mean external power management that hooks directly into the car's battery pack. The charger/inverter in most EV's isn't substantial enough to run an entire house and there would be a need to isolate the house from the grid as well to keep from putting power back on the lines.

[Dagg]

Re: Don't get it

The charger/inverter in most EV's isn't substantial enough to run an entire house

Actually are wrong they don't use the inverter in the car it is linked to the inverter from the solar system or a separate inverter. Systems like this exist and are in places here in Australia.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: So you can still have enough remaining to use the EV to drive

No, you'll have enough for what you think you need to drive.

Any nasty surprise and your EV will not have enough juice to get where you need to go.

Frankly, to me an EV is already seriously limited as far as range is concerned. To give people an excuse to drain them for supplying power is the height of stupidity. There's already a waste of energy charging the damn things, now you want to waste more energy discharging them.

We don't have fusion yet, and too many countries are using coal. Stop the madness.

[chriskno]

Re: So you can still have enough remaining to use the EV to drive

Do try and keep up. Range of 300 miles is common place today.

[Graham Dawson]

Re: So you can still have enough remaining to use the EV to drive

EV range never works out anywhere near the claimed range IRL. Even the slightest deviation from the idealised driving state (carrying significant cargo, less than ideal driving conditions, diversions, etc etc) quickly saps energy. EVs are extremely efficient, but they have little choice in the matter due to how poor the energy density of batteries still is. The moment you introduce even one confounding variable, that efficiency is neutralised and the range drops like a stone.

[SundogUK]

Re: Don't get it

This is what they are claiming not what they will actually do. If they have control and they feel it's necessary, they will drain your battery down to zero.

[YetAnotherXyzzy]

Re: Don't get it

I'm not sure why SundogUK got so many downvotes. Perhaps some readers are blessed with electric utilities run by angels. But here on the august pages of El Reg I only read about electric utilities that would do anything for a quick buck, including this.

If bidirectional EV charging were implemented in a way that it was not technically possible for anyone but the vehicle owner to change its settings in any way, and those technical safeguards were simple and open enough for even me to to understand, then and only then would I consider it. And yes I am aware that what I propose would make it much less useful to the utilities, and no that's not the problem of the vehicle owner.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Don't get it

The price is dynamic in some places. Charge to 85% when it's cheap, discharge to 65% when it's expensive. For a 100kWh pack, that's $1.80 a day in California. Texas has extremely dynamic pricing so you could probably make a fortune every time there's extreme weather.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Don't get it

"The price is dynamic in some places. Charge to 85% when it's cheap, discharge to 65% when it's expensive. For a 100kWh pack, that's $1.80 a day in California. Texas has extremely dynamic pricing so you could probably make a fortune every time there's extreme weather."

The work needs to be done to transmit current electricity pricing down the lines so EV owners can set trip points on charging and selling power back. I've stated this a bunch of times, but I think it does need repeating. I see it as a good way to make sure wind turbines aren't switched off due to grid oversupply. If wind is high and demand is low, transmitting a low price down the wires could get demand up through EV's taking advantage and acting as the grid's storage. Many people could charge up to 70-80% normally (maybe less) and if rates drop a lot, they could charge up to 90-100% and not need to charge again for some time. In the windy season, it could be exceptionally cheap to run an EV. It also gives a better utilization on the turbines since they are switched off right now when there is too much supply and are often the first thing to be cut out.

[deive]

Re: Don't get it

Something like half-hour slots with pricing directly tied to the wholesale price, plus an API so you could automate?

https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/

I don't like shilling for a specific company but this exists in the UK already :D

[MachDiamond]

Re: Don't get it

"I don't like shilling for a specific company but this exists in the UK already :D"

It's needs to be made a standard so it's worthwhile for everybody to create devices to take advantage of it. A dual zone electric or multi-input water heater is another place to dump cheap power besides an EV, but it needs to know when rates are cheap.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Clarity

"an initiative from Ford, BMW and Honda's American arm"

This phrase highlights the importance of both the Oxford comma and singular/plural agreement. It implies that Ford is the American arm of BMW and Honda, whereas the article later stipulates that there are three companies involved in the project, Ford, BMW, and Honda. I know that the Oxford comma has been taken out back and unceremoniously executed, but it would certainly reduce ambiguity in this case, as would using the word "arms."

(I know, I could have just sent a note to the author, but by God, I am willing to die on the hill of defending the Oxford comma, and I don't care who knows it!)

[DryBones]

Re: Clarity

As far as I know, the Oxford comma is alive and well, and styles that don't use it are simply wrong.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Clarity

Sorry, I obviously read that wrong because I understood that there were three companies involved. BMW and Honda not being US companies, it was obvious that it was their US presence that was involved.

I will endeavor to confuse myself better in the future.

[lglethal]

Re: Clarity

Ahh the good old missing comma! It's the difference between:

"Lets eat, Grandma!" and the somewhat creepier "Lets eat Grandma!"

(My mind automatically puts the commas in now, because they are so often left out, so I wasnt confused about it being 3 firms, but you are correct, they really should have had another comma in there....)

[Mayday]

Not sure I'd do this

I understand it's with permission, but I'd prefer my battery be up when I charge it. Even if they dont chew to empty (what is the lower limit?) what if I have a 300km drive to do and I hop in the car and there's only a "standard commute" plus a few km in the tank? Plus I'm consuming charge cycles and wearing out my battery to benefit someone else.

Maybe I'm greedy. Then again its my car and my battery which I payed for.

[Kristian Walsh]

Re: Not sure I'd do this

They’re not taking it, they’re borrowing it, and they’re not taking it all. The amounts are in the order of 5~10 kWh of battery (how much is your choice). The power of V2G is in signing up hundreds of thousands of cars. 5 kWh x 100,000 cars = half a gigawatt-hour of on-demand power supply. Whatever they pay you for it, it’s cheaper than building a power-station.

You’re not really consuming charge cycles either because in use the rate of discharge is pretty slow, certainly when compared to driving; and you’re not only benefiting someone else: you’re being paid for it.

But if you want an appeal to greed, the technology behind V2G also allows you to use your car battery as a short-term energy store without re-exporting to the grid - on days you’re not travelling, you can charge at off-peak, discharge through the day and you will pay the absolute lowest price for electricity (maybe even zero if you have a lot of solar panels). But don’t think you’re getting one over on the utilities... this is exactly what they want you to do.

[Wellyboot]

Re: Not sure I'd do this

There isn’t a utility business out there that will build additional generation capacity before it can sell every kWh it will generate, especially as limited supply pushes up the unit price for zero investment.

All this 'borrowing' will result in is an ever narrowing margin between demand and actual grid capacity.

To put it simply, total online generation capacity plus online storage has to cope with peak demand every time.

Total online generation capacity must be capable of charging the online storage over and above the in use demand before the next anticipated peak.

The online bit is crucial, every night, solar capacity is zero, domestic demand will be high charging vehicles & storage depleted during the day, then one day there's a blackout* and everyone will be turning off the grid upload feature to keep their personal lights on a little bit longer - creating a self fulfilling spiral as all the other lights will go out that little bit quicker.

*unexpected failure at an offshore wind farm while another plant was offline for maintenance blacked out a large part of UK a while back, the international power lines were already maxed out on their draw.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Not sure I'd do this

"on days you’re not travelling"

I suspect you meant was "days when you're not planning to travel". If you have an emergency and need, for example, to go to A & E the electricity company isn't going to reply that loan quickly enough.

[SundogUK]

Re: Not sure I'd do this

It's with permission now but will it always be?

[Dagg]

Re: Not sure I'd do this

Then again its my car and my battery which I payedpaid for.

Here in Australia if you enter into an agreement with your power company to use either your house battery or car battery as a grid connected battery they (the power company) will pay you good money. You can set the limits that they can draw down to. The power company will also charge the battery for you (at a cheap rate) when they have surplus power. Your battery allows the power company to balance out usage.

If you have just a house battery or use your car as a house battery then the power companies can't touch it.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Not sure I'd do this

"The power company will also charge the battery for you (at a cheap rate) when they have surplus power."

I'd rather set the rules on selling and buying. If I have solar and it's close to dawn on a weekday, I might not want to buy any power from the grid as there might be enough in the battery to get me through my morning routine and then it will charge from the panels "for free". I might also want to prevent selling power in the afternoon so I have plenty stored to keep from paying the highest rates of the day rather than bridge over that period. I might also want to scrap all of that as family has come visiting and my usage pattern is very different.

[toejam++]

"because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

In my area, two car households are the norm. Just leave one of them plugged into the house to keep the lights and appliances on, use the other one to drive around. Most folks can find alternate transportation to work or school, assuming whatever knocked your power out didn't also knock out theirs. Small price to pay versus a whole-house generator or dedicated battery backup.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: "because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

Surely a dedicated battery system is cheaper than a second vehicle?

[Kristian Walsh]

Re: "because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

Maybe, but spending £2000 for a 5kWh battery and high power inverter looks expensive when your car came with at least 40 kWh of battery, you’re already paying for it, and like most cars it spends over half its working life parked at your house...

[Toni the terrible]

Re: "because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

Then a EV battery based car is even more expensive, keep the gas guzzler!

[blackcat]

Re: "because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

Grid connected batteries also tend to be LiFePo4 and will have a longer cycle life.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

"you’re already paying for it" as a car, not as storage for the grid

"and like most cars it spends over half its working life parked at your house." to be used as a car when needed, not to keep the tarmac dry because it's been drained. Realistically, any Pennine village I drive through has cars parked on the road because rows and rows of industrial revolution period houses were built with little or no space between front door and footpath (footpath? luxury!). Such cars can't be connected to the house and I can't see the necessary public 2-way infrastructure being built by 3rd parties any time soon. there's enough problems getting enough public 1-way infrastructure built.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: "because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

The surprising answer is that home batteries are more expensive than an EV. The car also has the advantage that you can drive it somewhere to charge then take the power home home.

I have a home battery to avoid "peak" afternoon rates and getting through nuisance power outages. As much as I dislike the power company, scaling it and solar up to go off grid isn't at all viable today. There would be no ROI, ever, in my urban setting. That could change if old car battery packs get recycled for home use.

[Toni the terrible]

Re: "because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark"

Now there are many places where one car per household (or none) is the norm and alt transport methods are rare or very inconvenient. It has been argued that having no cars is actually better -if there are alt transport methods.

[iced.lemonade]

maybe

i feel the research resource may be better spent on some crucial areas, such as (1) improving the capacity, (2) improving the reliability and (3) improving the safety of the batteries, rather than some nice-to-have areas like (in us) bidirectional charging or (in europe) in-car entertainment...

otherwise the ev car industry may be dominated by the asian auto makers in a not-too-far-future - just see how the battery technology is evolving in mainland china.

[lglethal]

Re: maybe

"just see how the battery technology is evolving in mainland China."

Not to be too pedantic, but Chinese firms have made some BIG claims recently on battery tech, true. But so far, not a single one of the claimed batteries has been seen in the wild or been given the chance to be tested, so all such claims should be taken with a pinch of salt at this point. Until you actually see these wonder batteries in use somewhere, and tested by independent observers, you probably shouldnt take their existence as gospel...

[MachDiamond]

Re: maybe

"Not to be too pedantic, but Chinese firms have made some BIG claims recently on battery tech, true. But so far, not a single one of the claimed batteries has been seen in the wild or been given the chance to be tested,"

Plenty of universities are guilty too. Some grad student will come up with a lab curiosity on a nano scale and extrapolate the findings to absurdia. There's a huge amount of work that has to be done from when a new battery technology or improvement is found in a lab to when IT MIGHT become commercially viable. I've had that sort of thing happen when I built a prototype product that came out awesome but then couldn't get 10 to come out consistently. Sometimes it was just too labor intensive to make the product in quantity and the market for it wouldn't support something at twice the price of the competition no matter how much better it was.

[Caver_Dave]

Connection

Does this mean that they might come up with a common standard for the charging connectors?

Why do the manufacturers insist on having different connectors on their cars?

Charge stations have to support multiple different charging styles and whenever you turn up to one, there is nearly always a queue for the type of connector you want and empty spaces at the other types.

(For a while we had two electric cars with different connectors, so the choice of which vehicle to take on a longer journey was determined by which connectors were reported broken on the various charging stations. And broken was nearly always on the payment taking side, rather than the physical ability to supply watts.)

[blackcat]

Re: Connection

I'm sure that is their desire but reality is usually different.

Not that long ago the US gave the nod to the Tesla charger as the new standard

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/28/sae_approves_standard_tesla_charger/

So odd that Tesla is not on that list.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Connection

"So odd that Tesla is not on that list."

Not at all. Musk won't want to cannibalise his Powerwall market. It pains me to say it but that's the more sensible way to go. The requirements of EV charging and grid backup are not the same and not likely to be fully compatible for many if not most use cases.

[blackcat]

Re: Connection

Tesla claim they are working on V2G. I know they are also trying to create the first distributed power generation network in the US with the powerwalls.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Connection

" I know they are also trying to create the first distributed power generation network in the US with the powerwalls"

Many home battery storage systems can send power to the grid. The Powerwall is following in the footsteps of companies such as Bosch, Siemens and BYD to name a few. I'd have to see some scenarios and numbers to see if it's worth sending power to the grid from a home storage battery or holding on to it so it's there to offset usage at the home.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Connection

"Not that long ago the US gave the nod to the Tesla charger as the new standard"

The SAE J3400 standard will use the Tesla US plug and the CCS protocol so it's a combination of the two "standards" that are already in use in the US. In other parts of the world, Tesla was required to provide the CCS combo plug for their cars rather than their own.

The standard isn't codified yet and the makers that have pledged to go with it won't have it on their cars for a year or three. Even some Tesla owners will have to upgrade their cars so they speak CCS and not all Superchargers speak CCS right now either. In the process, Tesla has to put their plug in the public domain, but they will then be able to stick their hand out for a pile of US taxpayer largesse. Previously, the free money the US government was/is to give away towards EV charging would have excluded Tesla since they were a walled garden.

[wiggers]

All your electrons are belong to us.

"which will in turn let the grid sap some stored EV battery juice at times of high demand (with permission), as well as management options that'll restrict EV charging to "grid-friendly" times of day."

[MachDiamond]

Re: All your electrons are belong to us.

"as well as management options that'll restrict EV charging to "grid-friendly" times of day.""

There might be a very good reason an EV needs to be charged at a time of high demand. The easiest way to nudge people towards time when demand is low is to vary pricing. If you are in the SE of the US and a hurricane is on the way, you will want to top up your EV to be able to evacuate. If The Man has locked people out of EV charging, that's not going to go well for those rule makers. If they don't have some sort of code to bypass those restrictions themselves, they could also be caught with their $130,000 Model X having to be abandoned in the drive to be caught in the flood and take the Range Rover/Mercedes/BMW/Escalde/Aspen instead.

[SonofRojBlake]

More reasons, if I needed them, to stick to petrol for as long as feasible. It's like they're trying to disincentivise going electric.

[Roland6]

Compatibility?

The challenge is going to be to make this compatible with the existing charging interfaces so that, when it is finally agreed, it does not require a complete replacement of the thousands of charging points currently being deployed.

Obviously, for this V2G to work charging points will need to be upgraded, however, this should only be those charging points where this is desired.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Compatibility?

"Obviously, for this V2G to work charging points will need to be upgraded, however, this should only be those charging points where this is desired."

That will mainly be sites used by fleets and at workplaces where a car will be for long periods of the day. People could opt in while at home, but I would suspect that many will want to have a charged up car when at home more than when they are at work, just in case. Fast charging sites along a motorway would be the least place to have V2G.

[Jimmy2Cows]

management options that'll restrict EV charging to "grid-friendly" times of day.

Ah, the societal sleepwalk into a dystopian nightmare continues. Need your car for work, a trip, shopping, taking a friend or relative to a hospital appointment, or any of the other thousands of reasons why people might want to use their car, only to find it wasn't charged because the grid said no? Well, tough titties.

Or worse, it was charged, but you forgot to unplug it or turn off the upload feature, and now there's not enough juice to get you where you need to go. Who cares if you're going to miss that urgent medical appointment, family holiday, work meeting or whatever. It's all for the Greater Good (TM).

Why are we even allowing this to be considered? Government wants to force everyone to go electric, then refuse to ensure the necessary infrastructure is provided to support it all, leading to wasteful (charge, discharge, recharge) but cheap (for the utility) solutions like V2G, and giving energy and grid providers undue and excessive influence (by which I mean, any influence) on how the public organises their own lives.

When is it enough?

[blackcat]

Re: management options that'll restrict EV charging to "grid-friendly" times of day.

It is shiny tech that makes people go Ooooooo and not look at the real issues. We're putting the decorations on the cake before we've even finished mixing the ingredients, let alone baked and iced the darn thing.

You just need to look at the delays in connecting both generation projects AND EV chargers to the grid to see we have a much bigger issue.

[John Robson]

Re: management options that'll restrict EV charging to "grid-friendly" times of day.

So you didn't set your car to "always keep 20kWh reserve"?

Well, more fool you.

[MachDiamond]

Re: management options that'll restrict EV charging to "grid-friendly" times of day.

"Or worse, it was charged, but you forgot to unplug it or turn off the upload feature, and now there's not enough juice to get you where you need to go. Who cares if you're going to miss that urgent medical appointment, family holiday, work meeting or whatever. It's all for the Greater Good (TM)."

I'm getting that you never plan ahead when you have an appointment and can't be bothered to program any energy sharing to always leave enough for off-nominal use. Do you fill up the petrol tank the day before you are going to leave on a long driving holiday or at least make sure you have enough to get to the train station/airport? Or, do you wait until the morning of and race around to get to the petrol station when you are already behind schedule?

[Lee D]

Do not want

Why should my investment in a car be used to make up for lack of investment by the entire energy industry?

I'm of the same opinion with my solar at the moment.

I'm slowly building up capacity but at no point do I ever want to connect and feed back to the grid. There is literal money to be made that way (pathetic though it is) but I don't see why I should be the one building out so that they can sell it to other people.

I plan to be energy independent in the next few years, and my house is all-electric and was bought partly on that basis.

I'll generate what I can, and save the expense and hassle of trying to tie in with the grid. If I end up being able to only maintain a grid connection as a backup (paying standard charge only), that'll be a success.

Sorry, but if I've generated electricity, charged my car (and that, in itself, would be a damn lot of electricity) for hours upon end from my equipment, why would I want to let someone else take that charge and probably pay me less than it cost to generate, or to buy from the grid?

The industry had the opportunity to build out and use the resources available and it was never interested, now that it saves them a few billion on a nuclear plant they expect me to send them power and act as a giant battery for them at my own expense?

Come to me with an offer in excess of twice the grid price per KWh, and a guarantee you'll take whatever I can produce, and we'll talk. But chances are I still won't let you discharge my car battery purely because I want it to be charged for my usage at any time of the day or night.

Also, you then won't get to dictate when I can decide to charge that battery to help your over-generation.

[John Robson]

Re: Do not want

So you're choosing to curtail production rather than sell the excess to, for example, cover your standing charge.

Why would you not want to sell something that you are producing and cannot use?

[MachDiamond]

Re: Do not want

"Why should my investment in a car be used to make up for lack of investment by the entire energy industry?"

It makes sense not to overbuild a solar system and to use all that you generate so IF you wind up exporting anything, it's after the house is cool or hot enough, there's a full tank of hot water (back to the old water heater tank again), the car is topped up and any battery storage is full. Getting 90% to self-sufficiency and using the grid that that last little bit (if available) can be the most cost effective way to go. If the grid is down, and how often does that happen where you are, there's likely some ways to economize enough so you can be perfectly comfortable on your own. There are modules now that can take care of power management to rules you set. It's also not that hard to have a system that will export to the grid or 'island' as required so it's not stacks of money to have both options. This is the path I am planning for long term. Short term I'm getting certain things off the grid that return the most savings for the least expense.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Battery sharing?

When every recharge cycle affects battery life, and the battery only has a thousand good charging cycles before range is degraded? Not just no but HELL no. It's bad enough that you'd need new batteries that cost as much as a new car after 200K miles if you'te lucky, but imagine driving 100 miles once a week, and needing to replace the battery after 3 years and 15,000 miles of driving because the utility used your battery for spare backup. I guarantee they'll be charging you 10 times more for the power going in than for the power coming out.

[John Robson]

Re: Battery sharing?

Yes recharge cycles affect battery life - but we're talking about a) getting paid for it and b) 0.05C charging

You're not going to kill an EV battery by using it as a grid supplement.

Charge cycle for a 50kWh battery would normally net ~200 miles

To run that cycle as grid export would take ~7 hours continuous full rate export

Let's assume you use 50% of the battery as arbitrage each day, knowing you want the other 50% for driving - that's 100*365 miles in a year or 36k miles a year. So after three years you've done 110k miles of *extremely* gentle charge cycles.

You've also been paid for 9MWh of electricity, and imported 9MWh. Depending on your provider, you might get paid for that capturing surplus generation as well as paid to provide at times of peak demand - an arbitrage rate of 20p would net you nearly 2 grand.

And you still don't need a new battery... you know why - what happens to a battery that's done 200k miles? Well, it has slightly less range than it used to, but still plenty for your daily driving needs, or if not yours then someone elses.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Battery sharing?

Awful lot of assumptions there, but I take a bit more cynical view of how a corporation (particularly a utility) will use my equipment for their benefit, starting with the paper they will have you sign stating that they are not responsible for damage or loss of lifepan on the battery. Plus, I only assumed they would run one charge cycle on it per day when they would be able to run more than one. Not to mention, finding the battery drained right when you want to go out because the power company decided to use your juice during the day. No, I just can't see allowing it. You downvoters go right ahead though, don't say you weren't warned.

[John Robson]

Re: Battery sharing?

"Not to mention, finding the battery drained right when you want to go out because the power company decided to use your juice during the day."

So you still don't want to set a reserve level on your battery?

Nothing like holding up straw men as hard as you can because you know that you're asserting a pretty daft position.

[John Robson]

He really does say some dumb stuff

"I don't think very many people are going to want to use bidirectional charging, unless you have a Powerwall, because if you unplug your car, your house goes dark, and this is extremely inconvenient,"

More inconvenient than the house going dark when you have 60+kWh of stored energy in a convenient box?

Besides which, at the point at which you're umnplugging the car - you're probably leaving the house.

Use that LED to indicate that the house is drawing power from the car, then it's not a surprise when you unplug.

Such a dumb reason to not put V2G on their AC inverter.

[MachDiamond]

Re: He really does say some dumb stuff

"Besides which, at the point at which you're umnplugging the car - you're probably leaving the house."

That was my thinking. If I'm out and the power goes off, the worst thing is I have to reset a couple of clocks (stupid range and microwave don't have a bloody back up for the clock time). I'm not going to race home and plug my car in to make sure all of my outputs are ready and waiting. The same thing applies when I'm leaving. I might check on my phone to make sure my destination isn't in the dark too or it would be pointless to go. The corner market is on the same distribution leg my house is on so if I'm off, so are they. No point in leaving if that's where I'm going.

[petef]

Reduced battery life

The lifespan of the car battery will be lessened by the extra charging cycles.

It is also a waste of energy compared with a Powerwall type solution. You can apportion some of the car battery's weight to V2G and it is not efficient to be lugging that around with you.

[John Robson]

Re: Reduced battery life

"It is also a waste of energy compared with a Powerwall type solution. You can apportion some of the car battery's weight to V2G and it is not efficient to be lugging that around with you."

Or you look at it the other way around - you have a large battery because you wanted it to make 5 journeys a year easier... and for 23 hours a day 360 days a year it's just parked doing nothing.

Now you can use that battery as a whole house UPS, giving you several days of "normal" running, or a week or more "reduced load" running from an asset you are paying for anyway.

V2G is a different sum game from V2H, but the same applies - you're not committing that battery to "nothing but V2G", you're using it for driving long journeys and then running an induction stove whilst camping, or your house when you get home. Typical cars need ~5kW/day on average in the UK, so 360 days a year your 50kW EV battery has a 90% reserve - maybe assume that a car only moves 50% of days, then you still have an 80% reserve. Reserve that you might reasonably want to be there for a few days a year - but why not have the ability to use it for the rest of the year.

[darklord]

So you have money to buy or replace your car more regularly

So by charging and continuously dischaging your EV battery will shorten its live meaning it will need replacing a lot earlier. sort of like the domwits using thier cars as batteries to store thier free solar energy. yet an average car battery replacement is 12-15K. to save a few pence.

And who wants to by a used EV with a shagged battery. the vehicle will have little to no inherent value unlike an ICE where a replacement engine should it be needed is a fraction of the cost (may have a few miles on it) but it isn't in the tens of thousands (which is more than the cars worth used anyway).

what these cretins don't realize the software will report not only miles driven but also charge and discharge cycles so no getting away with conning a dealer.

"So sir your 5 year old tesla has oh 20k on it yes well buy it oh i see it has 15000 discharge cycles , hmm well give you a grand trade in as scrap as the batteries shagged!!!!!

Yes electric vehicles are the future but not with current tech, we all know this is a stepping stone to appease Europe and BO JO who implemented a false ceiling of 2030 when the rest of the world set 2050 to allow tech to catch up.

[John Robson]

Re: So you have money to buy or replace your car more regularly

15k discharge cycles - that's conservatively 60kWh * 15,000 cycles = 900 MWh of arbitrage.

We drive an EV, and are fairly heavy domestic users, and we use a bit shy of 9MWh a year - so your theoretical vehicle has done *way more* than a century's worth of work (three centuries of an ofgem "typical" UK household).

A 9kWh battery sees us through basically every day (a small handful of days since February have had peak import here - we're approaching the point where increased use, though things like more oven cooked meals, and diminishing PV generation (a mere 2.5kWp) will take us back into peak usage for a small amount of each day. So we'd be looking at a week for each charge cycle in reality, the 15k cycles is then looking like three hundred years for a heavy domestic user.

That 900MWh of arbitrage is also going to have netted the user an amount of money over the years. Even at just 10p/kWh arbitrage rate (and mine is *far* higher than that on average) that's £90k.

If we assume that 2k cycles is more reasonable then divide all those numbers by 7.5 (13 years of heavy domestic or 40+years for a typical household and £12k in arbitrage costs).

And now your 300 mile Tesla "only" has a 240 mile range.

Just for giggles... your 5 year Tesla has had an *average* power flow of 41kW... or 180A at 230V AC.

One with 2k cycles has 5.5kW (24A) which is at least technically acheivable - if completely ridiculous.