Intermittency Of Renewables?… Not So Much

[wercal]

35. You need more data and less wishful thinking

"But the batteries are expected to outlive the rest of the auto." I think that is a very poor assumption. Cars average 11 years service life right now. Do you really believe the battery will outlast the car?

"The use that the utility puts the battery to one where only a little is taken, there wouldn't be cases where deep discharges occur. That means wear and tear isn't nearly what you might imagine." I'm not sure why you are attributing more wear to 'deep discharges' than 'where only a little is taken'. The battery and car already protect themselves from a damaging discharge...and all discharges are equal. In aggregate, discharging and recharging 1 kwh a day for two weeks is exactly the same wear as one 14 kwh discharge in 12 hour period. But none of that matters anyway, as my example was only intended to demonstrate that the huge profits you see from selling battery power just aren't there....assuming maximum depletion/recharge 'opportunities' to make a 'profit'. If you want to reduce the discharge, the 'profit' is just thinned out.

"When you stack that up against the value of ancillary services, the owner can come out (depending on assumptions) between $1500-$3500 per year to the good IIRC (I haven't read those research papers in several years)." This is where you really need to back yourself up with numbers. Using that Volt battery, charged twice a day every day, a $3,500 'profit' implies a cost differential of 34 cents per kwh. Since it only costs 12 cents retail in the first place, where on earth are you going to get that differential? It just doesn't add up, and you shouldn't make such fantastical statements without backing it up with calculations. And no, I'm not going to go on a Google hunt...you make the claim, you should prove it.

Now you have poo-pood my notion that the cost differential is based on 'time of day' power price differentials...and vaguely talked about 'ancillary services'. So...where's the beef? How does an electric car owner get paid for selling battery capacity? And how on earth is it valued at 34 cents a kwh, which is almost triple the cost of power in the first place.

Pretend I am a car owner, who you are trying to convince to do this. Don't tell me too Google a study. Tell me why I should use my valuable battery life in terms that don't make me feel like a vacuum cleaner salesman is glossing over the fine print.

V2G is just a huge turn off to me...its perfect for 'dreamers', but I just don't see it ever happening in reality. (btw, my qualifications include being 1) and engineer and 2) a consumer and 3) an amateur auto mechanic). The very idea is predicated on a flawed notion of large scale penetration of electric vehicles into the auto market, which is not supported by current sales trends. But even if that happens, the next step involves conning car owners into participating...again, the power company only uses V2G if its cheaper than owning their own batteries, which means the car owner gets burned.

Fast forward 25 years from now - I guarantee you V2G will still be a novelty that a few people participate in, and it will have an almost immeasurably small impact on our electrical system. How do I know this with such certainty? Well, we each use 13,600 kwh per capita, per day....we have less than one vehicle per capita, but we'll make it one to give V2G the benefit of the doubt and simplify things. That means that a Volt could supply 0.21% of my daily energy needs. Is that really enough to serve as a buffer for intermittent power sources? How about a Tesla...85 kwh five times a day...3.13% of my daily energy needs. Even if the entire nation's vehicle fleet were top of the line Teslas, with rapid chargers, and we added another 60 million cars so there would be one per capita, V2G would only provide 3.13% of our daily energy needs. No study in the world is going to change that reality.