Largest Vehicle-To-Grid Charging Project On The Planet?
December 11, 2021 8:52 PM Subscribe
Utrecht is working towards becoming the first bi-directional city in the world and in his recent trip Robert Llewellyn visited a huge solar powered car park and charging station to see how EVs and Vehicle-To-Grid charging are being integrated together. (Fully Charged, YouTube, 16m26s)
If you're thinking that using your vehicle in this way is going to have a noticeably negative effect either on your usable range or on your car's battery life, it helps to remember that a typical vehicle battery will have at least five times the storage capacity of a typical fixed house battery. So you'd only need to move the vehicle battery back and forth between say 80% and 100% charge levels to get the same storage performance as the entire capacity of something like a Tesla Powerwall.
EV batteries are just freakishly huge, and not using them routinely for v2g would be an insane waste of resources.
posted by flabdablet at 9:23 PM on December 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
EV batteries are just freakishly huge, and not using them routinely for v2g would be an insane waste of resources.
posted by flabdablet at 9:23 PM on December 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
Interesting. I have a 2015 Leaf, which probably can't be used for this purpose. I do have solar on the garage, installed earlier this year, and it's clear that for several months of the year, if we could store our excess generation we would not draw anything from the grid. As it is I do my best to only charge the car on sunny afternoons, and revel in driving for free...
In my country power companies pay you a little bit for each excess kWh you push out, but it's only about a third of what they charge you for the kWh you use! I'm looking at battery prices all the time... the maths didn't stack up for a battery unit when I was looking in January, but I suspect in a year or two things could be very different.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:47 PM on December 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
In my country power companies pay you a little bit for each excess kWh you push out, but it's only about a third of what they charge you for the kWh you use! I'm looking at battery prices all the time... the maths didn't stack up for a battery unit when I was looking in January, but I suspect in a year or two things could be very different.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:47 PM on December 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
a 2015 Leaf, which probably can't be used for this purpose
Making it able to be used this way should require no more than replacing its charge control module. If projects like Utrecht's take off, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see aftermarket or perhaps even OEM bidirectional charge modules becoming available as retrofits for older cars at quite moderate prices; there's not much more to them than a handful of power FETs and a microcontroller.
posted by flabdablet at 9:52 PM on December 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
Making it able to be used this way should require no more than replacing its charge control module. If projects like Utrecht's take off, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see aftermarket or perhaps even OEM bidirectional charge modules becoming available as retrofits for older cars at quite moderate prices; there's not much more to them than a handful of power FETs and a microcontroller.
posted by flabdablet at 9:52 PM on December 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
power companies pay you a little bit for each excess kWh you push out, but it's only about a third of what they charge you for the kWh you use
The benefit of local battery storage for you, then, would be in being able to avoid paying your power company's supply kWh rate for kWh you can generate and store locally. Anything you actually export after that is gravy.
And although I can't remember off the top of my head what the battery capacity is for a 2015 Leaf, I'm betting it's both multiples of that of a Powerwall and something you've already paid for. It should be completely routine for you to be able to take advantage of it to reduce the amount of grid power you need to buy.
posted by flabdablet at 9:56 PM on December 11, 2021
The benefit of local battery storage for you, then, would be in being able to avoid paying your power company's supply kWh rate for kWh you can generate and store locally. Anything you actually export after that is gravy.
And although I can't remember off the top of my head what the battery capacity is for a 2015 Leaf, I'm betting it's both multiples of that of a Powerwall and something you've already paid for. It should be completely routine for you to be able to take advantage of it to reduce the amount of grid power you need to buy.
posted by flabdablet at 9:56 PM on December 11, 2021
Thanks for posting this! I was interested in looking into what they said about cars being the largest consumer of batteries these days — according to this, they are — in 2021, 61% of battery demand was for transportation, 27% was consumer electronics, and 12% was "stationary".
posted by wesleyac at 10:06 PM on December 11, 2021
posted by wesleyac at 10:06 PM on December 11, 2021
And those figures are not even close to what we're going to see once EVs start seriously displacing ICEVs. I will be astonished if cars are not going to be where 95% of the batteries are at and where 99% of the new batteries are at.
posted by flabdablet at 11:09 PM on December 11, 2021
posted by flabdablet at 11:09 PM on December 11, 2021
I have watched half of the video and still don't understand how it works.
The cars are plugged in for hours at a time and during this time get fully charged, then give some of that energy back to the grid during the same charge (meaning, before they get unplugged)? So all the car batteries do is temporarily catch some overflow?
I think I'm missing something, could someone explain?
posted by M. at 11:42 PM on December 11, 2021
The cars are plugged in for hours at a time and during this time get fully charged, then give some of that energy back to the grid during the same charge (meaning, before they get unplugged)? So all the car batteries do is temporarily catch some overflow?
I think I'm missing something, could someone explain?
posted by M. at 11:42 PM on December 11, 2021
At the insurance offices with the solar PV roof on the carpark, employees plug their cars in when they arrive in the morning, and the building starts up on power pulled from those cars. Later in the day, there's enough sun on the panels not only to pay back what the building took from the cars early on and supply the building's own energy demand, but to top up all the parked cars as well and leave them all with more charge than they arrived with. So the building gets free, fully dispatchable electricity and the cars get free fuel.
In general, the principle of v2g is that most cars will not, on any typical day, need anywhere near the full range that the entire capacity of their onboard batteries would give them, meaning that some of that capacity can almost always be profitably employed by buying power from the grid when it's plentiful and therefore cheap, and selling it back when it's less so and therefore expensive.
It makes no sense to have 50+kWh just sitting there on its wheels completely unemployed for the majority of the car's existence (because, let's face it, most of almost every privately owned car's time is spent parked) when you could use say 10kWh of that for grid-interactive storage and make an profit on the associated energy arbitrage. Anywhere a 10kWh Tesla Powerwall would make anything even vaguely resembling economic sense, employing 20% of the battery capacity of a car you've already bought purely as a means of transport makes more sense.
And if you have a city full of cars all doing this as a matter of course, that's a city that doesn't need a huge, devoted fixed battery farm or a gas peaker plant to match instantaneous energy supply with instantaneous energy demand.
And if you have a continent full of cars all doing this as a matter of course, there's potentially no need for fixed energy storage in any form. A national fleet of EVs is a mind-mangling amount of electricity storage capacity.
posted by flabdablet at 12:00 AM on December 12, 2021 [22 favorites]
In general, the principle of v2g is that most cars will not, on any typical day, need anywhere near the full range that the entire capacity of their onboard batteries would give them, meaning that some of that capacity can almost always be profitably employed by buying power from the grid when it's plentiful and therefore cheap, and selling it back when it's less so and therefore expensive.
It makes no sense to have 50+kWh just sitting there on its wheels completely unemployed for the majority of the car's existence (because, let's face it, most of almost every privately owned car's time is spent parked) when you could use say 10kWh of that for grid-interactive storage and make an profit on the associated energy arbitrage. Anywhere a 10kWh Tesla Powerwall would make anything even vaguely resembling economic sense, employing 20% of the battery capacity of a car you've already bought purely as a means of transport makes more sense.
And if you have a city full of cars all doing this as a matter of course, that's a city that doesn't need a huge, devoted fixed battery farm or a gas peaker plant to match instantaneous energy supply with instantaneous energy demand.
And if you have a continent full of cars all doing this as a matter of course, there's potentially no need for fixed energy storage in any form. A national fleet of EVs is a mind-mangling amount of electricity storage capacity.
posted by flabdablet at 12:00 AM on December 12, 2021 [22 favorites]
You would probably still want green hydrogen and other biofuel generation rather than putting it all in batteries, but largely, yes, with that level of storage you'd be able to generate and store enough electricity during the day so that you've got power all through the night, with a battery that consumers are going to want anyway. It is a compelling answer to the first question every ignorant anti-renewable person asks: what happens when it's dark?
posted by Merus at 12:04 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Merus at 12:04 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
My favorite recent answer to the 'what happens after dark' question is 'transmission lines eight time zones long.'
posted by kaibutsu at 12:10 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by kaibutsu at 12:10 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
buying power from the grid when it's plentiful and therefore cheap, and selling it back when it's less so and therefore expensive
Or, equivalently, buying power from the grid when it's plentiful and therefore cheap, and using it yourself when it's less so and therefore expensive.
Peak generation for solar PV typically happens in the middle of the day, when most people are at work. Peak electricity consumption for the grid is typically morning and evening, when people are in their houses. If it became completely normal for people to load their cars up with cheap solar energy while they were parked at work - perhaps made even cheaper with a bit of energy arbitrage to soak up excess wind-generator capacity - and take that energy home with them of an evening, then not only would people end up paying a lot less for home energy but the load on the grid would get a lot less peaky.
Cars could become the "baseload" grid feeder that the coal and nuclear jockeys are always trying to remind us we've got to get from somewhere.
posted by flabdablet at 12:15 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Or, equivalently, buying power from the grid when it's plentiful and therefore cheap, and using it yourself when it's less so and therefore expensive.
Peak generation for solar PV typically happens in the middle of the day, when most people are at work. Peak electricity consumption for the grid is typically morning and evening, when people are in their houses. If it became completely normal for people to load their cars up with cheap solar energy while they were parked at work - perhaps made even cheaper with a bit of energy arbitrage to soak up excess wind-generator capacity - and take that energy home with them of an evening, then not only would people end up paying a lot less for home energy but the load on the grid would get a lot less peaky.
Cars could become the "baseload" grid feeder that the coal and nuclear jockeys are always trying to remind us we've got to get from somewhere.
posted by flabdablet at 12:15 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
My favorite recent answer to the 'what happens after dark' question is 'transmission lines eight time zones long.'
That was Buckminster Fuller's answer as well, and it's in its embryonic stages. But given the relatively rapid move to EVs in Europe, I suspect we're likely to see v2g make a bigger contribution earlier.
posted by flabdablet at 12:21 AM on December 12, 2021
That was Buckminster Fuller's answer as well, and it's in its embryonic stages. But given the relatively rapid move to EVs in Europe, I suspect we're likely to see v2g make a bigger contribution earlier.
posted by flabdablet at 12:21 AM on December 12, 2021
I live on an archipelago that roughly runs north-south (New Zealand) with the next nearest landmass (Australia) around 2000 km away so I'm afraid multi timezone transmission lines are out of the question, unless we can manage several multiples of the longest submarine power cable I found referenced on Wikipedia (400ish km between Scotland and Wales).
To be honest though NZ is blessed with enough hydro that solar is not really going to be huge here, ever. The doom scenario in NZ is a cold winter (high heating demand) after a dry summer/autumn (low hydro lake levels). Solar isn't that great in winter at our latitudes. Wind's ok but again, not so reliable in our geography (tends to be gusty and paradoxically, too strong). I guess solar during summer means we can keep the lake levels higher for winter.... having said all that, decentralising generation is a good thing from a resiliency POV and here in the the suburbs, solar is the only generation tool that's practical for me at all.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:14 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
To be honest though NZ is blessed with enough hydro that solar is not really going to be huge here, ever. The doom scenario in NZ is a cold winter (high heating demand) after a dry summer/autumn (low hydro lake levels). Solar isn't that great in winter at our latitudes. Wind's ok but again, not so reliable in our geography (tends to be gusty and paradoxically, too strong). I guess solar during summer means we can keep the lake levels higher for winter.... having said all that, decentralising generation is a good thing from a resiliency POV and here in the the suburbs, solar is the only generation tool that's practical for me at all.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:14 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
And yes, my Leaf has a very small battery for an electric car -- 22 kWh iirc -- but our daily net usage is much less than that except in the three coldest months (we use electric heating and it drops below 0 C overnight in Christchurch for many nights). Even say a 10 kWh battery would see us largely self-sufficient for a decent part of the year.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:18 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:18 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Its interesting to think about how the economics of this could play out in unusual ways. For example, if you are a reasonable sized company with an office - or maybe a large residential set of apartments on a site - then having a solar panel covered car park as described fulfils two goals for you: it gives your premises power (and the ability to sell on excess power) and it provides a place for your people to park.
The problem is that you need to have the right sort of vehicles: namely EVs that can bi-directionally charge. To get this there is an advantage to you to setting yourself up as a mini car-hire company: you buy the cars and then lease them out to employees/residents. The thing is, since the overall infrastructure is that is making you money at this point - you can probably lease or hire those cars for a low cost. Probably quite a bit lower than it would cost drivers to buy their own car. The same logic applies even more at a city level.
Quite a lot of the debate in the EV world has been about autonomy - the idea that road could have many fewer cars because you could just order one to turn up and drive you wherever, rather than own one. The problem is that the pay-off for this kind of autonomy is still (at best) several years away. But this mechanism shows a much shorter term potential for taking the overall number of cars on the road down.
posted by rongorongo at 2:20 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
The problem is that you need to have the right sort of vehicles: namely EVs that can bi-directionally charge. To get this there is an advantage to you to setting yourself up as a mini car-hire company: you buy the cars and then lease them out to employees/residents. The thing is, since the overall infrastructure is that is making you money at this point - you can probably lease or hire those cars for a low cost. Probably quite a bit lower than it would cost drivers to buy their own car. The same logic applies even more at a city level.
Quite a lot of the debate in the EV world has been about autonomy - the idea that road could have many fewer cars because you could just order one to turn up and drive you wherever, rather than own one. The problem is that the pay-off for this kind of autonomy is still (at best) several years away. But this mechanism shows a much shorter term potential for taking the overall number of cars on the road down.
posted by rongorongo at 2:20 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
the longest submarine power cable I found referenced on Wikipedia (400ish km between Scotland and Wales).
I think the longest is now the Norway-UK cable at 720km. (This doesn't refute your point, I just think it's interesting.)
posted by biffa at 3:59 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think the longest is now the Norway-UK cable at 720km. (This doesn't refute your point, I just think it's interesting.)
posted by biffa at 3:59 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
OTOH, with everybody having an electric car, we'd still get traffic jams and urban sprawl, with the majority of our space given over to car storage. Walkability, cycling (including electrically assisted bikes) and mass transit would help alleviate car dependency.
I'm sure that Utrecht, being in the Netherlands, is on this, though my concern is about people in the Anglosphere looking at this and thinking that replacing every car in every 3-car suburban household with an electric model and putting solar panels on the garage roof will fix things in itself.
posted by acb at 6:01 AM on December 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
I'm sure that Utrecht, being in the Netherlands, is on this, though my concern is about people in the Anglosphere looking at this and thinking that replacing every car in every 3-car suburban household with an electric model and putting solar panels on the garage roof will fix things in itself.
posted by acb at 6:01 AM on December 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
This is a very neat idea.
I wonder, though: is it a mistake to design one's energy grid on the assumption that a more-or-less constant number of private citizens will own and drive cars, and be willing to rent their batteries to the power grid like this? Those numbers could change over time, for any number of reasons.
Granted, such changes would probably be gradual enough to allow the engineering of the power grid to adapt. And I suppose that any design will necessarily depend on some assumptions – that the cost of its fuel will remain within certain parameters, that daily demand patterns will be reasonably predictable, etc.
Just saying: as an engineer (of sorts – software), my instinct is to be wary of a design that depends on external factors or systems that are beyond my organization's control. I'm not saying that it won't work – it seems quite promising, and it gives me more reason to move to the Netherlands – but it deserves a mention in the risk analysis.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:23 AM on December 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
I wonder, though: is it a mistake to design one's energy grid on the assumption that a more-or-less constant number of private citizens will own and drive cars, and be willing to rent their batteries to the power grid like this? Those numbers could change over time, for any number of reasons.
Granted, such changes would probably be gradual enough to allow the engineering of the power grid to adapt. And I suppose that any design will necessarily depend on some assumptions – that the cost of its fuel will remain within certain parameters, that daily demand patterns will be reasonably predictable, etc.
Just saying: as an engineer (of sorts – software), my instinct is to be wary of a design that depends on external factors or systems that are beyond my organization's control. I'm not saying that it won't work – it seems quite promising, and it gives me more reason to move to the Netherlands – but it deserves a mention in the risk analysis.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:23 AM on December 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
I live in Utrecht and had no idea this was going on at that insurance company.
Very cool to learn about from a US forum. :-)
posted by jouke at 7:18 AM on December 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Very cool to learn about from a US forum. :-)
posted by jouke at 7:18 AM on December 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm sure that Utrecht, being in the Netherlands, is on this, though my concern is about people in the Anglosphere looking at this and thinking that replacing every car in every 3-car suburban household with an electric model and putting solar panels on the garage roof will fix things in itself.
Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? If we had 240kWh of battery storage in the garage of every house and solar on every roof we could effectively solve the base load problem and not have to worry about the duck curve in one fell swoop.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:31 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? If we had 240kWh of battery storage in the garage of every house and solar on every roof we could effectively solve the base load problem and not have to worry about the duck curve in one fell swoop.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:31 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
I never saw this idea coming (which speaks more to my lack of imagination than anything).. And to the perfectly valid comments re: widespread use of private cars (the sprawl and waste is not really offset by the energy grid feature), perhaps we're moving towards a future where transportation barely resembles what we see in most N. American cities, and fully or semi-autonomous delivery/maintenance/sanitation units are constantly moving through urban environments while contributing to an energy grid.
It's fun to imagine a future that is not wretchedly horrible.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:14 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
It's fun to imagine a future that is not wretchedly horrible.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:14 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
perhaps we're moving towards a future where transportation barely resembles what we see in most N. American cities,
Major changes happen when there are a convergence of technologies and events. Covid, along with fast internet in populated areas, and software like Zoom, all converged at once, allowing/forcing many people to work from home, emptying the streets of cars. Many people have decided that they prefer this and are not giving it up.
Even before this, there has been a cultural shift. In my generation, we rushed to get our license permits the very day we became old enough to get them. Neither of my kids have been in any rush--going past age 21 before getting their licenses and being in no rush to buy cars, which I've heard is common in their generation. It is really mind-boggling to me, but they are definitely ready for any major shift that comes.
posted by eye of newt at 9:25 AM on December 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Major changes happen when there are a convergence of technologies and events. Covid, along with fast internet in populated areas, and software like Zoom, all converged at once, allowing/forcing many people to work from home, emptying the streets of cars. Many people have decided that they prefer this and are not giving it up.
Even before this, there has been a cultural shift. In my generation, we rushed to get our license permits the very day we became old enough to get them. Neither of my kids have been in any rush--going past age 21 before getting their licenses and being in no rush to buy cars, which I've heard is common in their generation. It is really mind-boggling to me, but they are definitely ready for any major shift that comes.
posted by eye of newt at 9:25 AM on December 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
You would probably still want green hydrogen and other biofuel generation rather than putting it all in batteries...
What does this even mean? You're talking about consumer-level green hydrogen production? Respectfully that is straight nonsense, there is no proposal I'm aware of to implement that in a scalable way. "Green hydrogen" as a whole, like "carbon capture and storage", is almost entirely a product of industry greenwashing.
and fully or semi-autonomous delivery/maintenance/sanitation units are constantly moving through urban environments while contributing to an energy grid.
This is also somewhat of an example of going around your ass to get to your elbow. We have plenty of examples of semi-autonomous transportation units constantly moving through our cities. Most of them run on train tracks. In dense urban areas, mass transit will basically always be much more efficient than whatever Elon Musk pipe dream we're running with today.
posted by viborg at 9:34 AM on December 12, 2021
What does this even mean? You're talking about consumer-level green hydrogen production? Respectfully that is straight nonsense, there is no proposal I'm aware of to implement that in a scalable way. "Green hydrogen" as a whole, like "carbon capture and storage", is almost entirely a product of industry greenwashing.
and fully or semi-autonomous delivery/maintenance/sanitation units are constantly moving through urban environments while contributing to an energy grid.
This is also somewhat of an example of going around your ass to get to your elbow. We have plenty of examples of semi-autonomous transportation units constantly moving through our cities. Most of them run on train tracks. In dense urban areas, mass transit will basically always be much more efficient than whatever Elon Musk pipe dream we're running with today.
posted by viborg at 9:34 AM on December 12, 2021
I never saw this idea coming
Amory Lovins did, in 1977.
Soft Energy Paths is a must-read, holding up astonishingly well for a work of its age.
posted by flabdablet at 9:35 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Amory Lovins did, in 1977.
Soft Energy Paths is a must-read, holding up astonishingly well for a work of its age.
posted by flabdablet at 9:35 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
From the top video:
posted by viborg at 9:38 AM on December 12, 2021
...then we can really solve the energy transition issue.I truly envy people who are this optimistic. Sure if he means we can solve the issue in Utrecht or even the Netherlands, that's within the realm of the realistic. As for being a solution to the world's energy crisis it just doesn't seem scalable to that level. Aren't some of the basic materials for batteries becoming scarce already? And we're just getting started...
posted by viborg at 9:38 AM on December 12, 2021
Aren't some of the basic materials for batteries becoming scarce already?
Lithium-ion battery manufacturers and car designers are already responding to the scarcity of cobalt by moving to alternative chemistries. There's also good work being done in radically different lithium chemistries that rely solely on readily available materials as well as offering much higher energy densities.
posted by flabdablet at 9:46 AM on December 12, 2021
Lithium-ion battery manufacturers and car designers are already responding to the scarcity of cobalt by moving to alternative chemistries. There's also good work being done in radically different lithium chemistries that rely solely on readily available materials as well as offering much higher energy densities.
posted by flabdablet at 9:46 AM on December 12, 2021
Not to mention we're pretty close to turning energy into lithium by refining seawater which also generates residual hydrogen as its byproduct.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:51 AM on December 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:51 AM on December 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Thanks for the sources flabdablet, good to see that there are already firms (mostly in China apparently) that are implementing alternative solutions.
To ...Pet Rock, while I again envy your optimism, respectfully these discussions among online technophiles do tends towards a pollyanna perspective much of the time. The key word in my comment was "scalable", and technologies which we're 'pretty close' to realizing are still in development which is generally a long ways from commercial production. We've been beyond 'pretty close' to mass desalinization to provide drinking water for quite a while now but that's still a long ways from being able to provide clean water to most of the at-risk people in the world.
The thing is, we're running out of time, FAST. I'm not going to dump a bunch of depressing evidence of how fucked we are here, at this point those who don't know about the issues probably don't want to know. So moving beyond the issue of lithium scarcity, the fact is that implementing this transition at mass scale in transportation systems of places like Dallas and Chongqing may well create a significantly larger carbon cost rather than energy savings due to the needs of manufacturing etc.
I'm no expert in transportation efficiency, I could well be wrong. I just don't yet see the discussion, here or in the provided links, rising to the level of an honest and comprehensive analysis of the real costs and benefits of this strategy at a global scale.
posted by viborg at 10:05 AM on December 12, 2021
To ...Pet Rock, while I again envy your optimism, respectfully these discussions among online technophiles do tends towards a pollyanna perspective much of the time. The key word in my comment was "scalable", and technologies which we're 'pretty close' to realizing are still in development which is generally a long ways from commercial production. We've been beyond 'pretty close' to mass desalinization to provide drinking water for quite a while now but that's still a long ways from being able to provide clean water to most of the at-risk people in the world.
The thing is, we're running out of time, FAST. I'm not going to dump a bunch of depressing evidence of how fucked we are here, at this point those who don't know about the issues probably don't want to know. So moving beyond the issue of lithium scarcity, the fact is that implementing this transition at mass scale in transportation systems of places like Dallas and Chongqing may well create a significantly larger carbon cost rather than energy savings due to the needs of manufacturing etc.
I'm no expert in transportation efficiency, I could well be wrong. I just don't yet see the discussion, here or in the provided links, rising to the level of an honest and comprehensive analysis of the real costs and benefits of this strategy at a global scale.
posted by viborg at 10:05 AM on December 12, 2021
my instinct is to be wary of a design that depends on external factors or systems that are beyond my organization's control
Utilities are very good at demand management, and have tons of experience building prediction models. They'll also have some control of the system -- e.g. an app that notifies EV owners that demand is high and rates are at peak. I'm guessing the forecast curve would be fairly predictable, no less so than solar.
One study I saw looked at fleet vehicles, which makes more sense to me, since the utility and fleet operator can agree on a ROI taking into account battery degradation.
posted by credulous at 11:43 AM on December 12, 2021
Utilities are very good at demand management, and have tons of experience building prediction models. They'll also have some control of the system -- e.g. an app that notifies EV owners that demand is high and rates are at peak. I'm guessing the forecast curve would be fairly predictable, no less so than solar.
One study I saw looked at fleet vehicles, which makes more sense to me, since the utility and fleet operator can agree on a ROI taking into account battery degradation.
posted by credulous at 11:43 AM on December 12, 2021
Self-driving cars are still a pipe dream. Even more so if we move towards walkable urbanism, where pedestrians, cyclists, playing children and more need to be taken into account by any autonomous vehicles. Focussing on the self-driving car could have unintended consequences, of doubling down on jaywalking laws or requiring pedestrians to wear transponder beacons in order to salvage the idea.
posted by acb at 12:16 PM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 12:16 PM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Most of us already wear transponder beacons, although we refer to them by the increasingly-inaccurate term “phones”.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:51 PM on December 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:51 PM on December 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
This is also somewhat of an example of going around your ass to get to your elbow. We have plenty of examples of semi-autonomous transportation units constantly moving through our cities. Most of them run on train tracks. In dense urban areas, mass transit will basically always be much more efficient than whatever Elon Musk pipe dream we're running with today.
I'm not sure about Elon Musk pipe dreams, but if you interpreted my comment as uninhibited enthusiasm for the day we're all zipping around in our personal Teslas, then you may have jumped to an unwarranted interpretation. Never change, MF
posted by elkevelvet at 12:57 PM on December 12, 2021
I'm not sure about Elon Musk pipe dreams, but if you interpreted my comment as uninhibited enthusiasm for the day we're all zipping around in our personal Teslas, then you may have jumped to an unwarranted interpretation. Never change, MF
posted by elkevelvet at 12:57 PM on December 12, 2021
Home batteries are pretty useless right now (in dollar terms). TLDR, get solar PV it's a no brainer, but battery tech isn't there yet, whether it's a wall installation or an EV.
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I did some modelling myself (this is specific to Australia) using a 6.6kW array with a mix of North and West facing panels, splitting my average energy use between day / night according to average daylight hours in Victoria.
I pay A$0.18 per kWh for usage and assume a A$0.07 feed in tariff for solar.
I get a 90% reduction in electricity usage billing. Normal usage is about A$1000, the solar eliminates daytime usage (about A$450) and then solar exports gives me a A$450 credit, so in the end I only need to pay them A$100 per year.
I also tried modelling the effect of having a 6.6kWh battery. Wow it makes almost no difference.
If the solar itself saved me A$900 per year, the battery increases the savings by only A$200. And it's super expensive: a 6.6kWh battery costs nearly A$10,000 and covers around 2/3 of night time usage, saving just A$200 per year. A back of envelope "logic" calculation to confirm would be, you're saving the difference between the purchased rate and feed in rate (0.11) x 6 kwh per night x 365 days per year = roughly A$200 ish.
Contrast this to a 6.6kW solar system which you could plausibly get for about A$4,000 after rebates, which saves A$900 per year, while the battery costs A$10,000 and saves just A$200 per year.
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So, sure, if you already had an EV, and you could use the battery for free... why not. But you're honestly not saving much (if you're just factoring in self use) - you'd pay A$80,000 for an EV (Model 3 LR in $A) and to save just A$300 per year on your electricity bill, it may not be worth the extra battery degradation on the EV, even if Tesla certified the battery for use this way.
posted by xdvesper at 4:30 PM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
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I did some modelling myself (this is specific to Australia) using a 6.6kW array with a mix of North and West facing panels, splitting my average energy use between day / night according to average daylight hours in Victoria.
I pay A$0.18 per kWh for usage and assume a A$0.07 feed in tariff for solar.
I get a 90% reduction in electricity usage billing. Normal usage is about A$1000, the solar eliminates daytime usage (about A$450) and then solar exports gives me a A$450 credit, so in the end I only need to pay them A$100 per year.
I also tried modelling the effect of having a 6.6kWh battery. Wow it makes almost no difference.
If the solar itself saved me A$900 per year, the battery increases the savings by only A$200. And it's super expensive: a 6.6kWh battery costs nearly A$10,000 and covers around 2/3 of night time usage, saving just A$200 per year. A back of envelope "logic" calculation to confirm would be, you're saving the difference between the purchased rate and feed in rate (0.11) x 6 kwh per night x 365 days per year = roughly A$200 ish.
Contrast this to a 6.6kW solar system which you could plausibly get for about A$4,000 after rebates, which saves A$900 per year, while the battery costs A$10,000 and saves just A$200 per year.
---
So, sure, if you already had an EV, and you could use the battery for free... why not. But you're honestly not saving much (if you're just factoring in self use) - you'd pay A$80,000 for an EV (Model 3 LR in $A) and to save just A$300 per year on your electricity bill, it may not be worth the extra battery degradation on the EV, even if Tesla certified the battery for use this way.
posted by xdvesper at 4:30 PM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
my instinct is to be wary of a design that depends on external factors or systems that are beyond my organization's control
That is the entire life of an electricity system operator unfortunately.
Widespread V2G will be enough to solve a lot of the challenges of the diurnal solar PV cycle and reduce the use of gas peakers. At some point you need additional storage to deal with a 1:20 weather event and that can't be done using any kind of diurnal battery because you only need it very infrequently so the capital cost per unit of energy stored has to be unbelievably low, efficiency doesn't matter so much since there will be thousands of hours of excess renewable electricity in any given year looking for a home.
Perez and others have shown that the cheapest way of keeping grids stable while renewable is to "over"build renewable capacity relative to demand since the cost of additional generation is <<<< cost of additional storage. Those grids are cheaper even if they throw away half of their generated electricity. I think they've shown that for most years this works but not that it has the appropriate guarantees for every year, so you need something else.
If you do something like turn that electricity into hydrogen, shove it into a salt cavern, and then burn it in a cheap gas turbine for your contingency supply you can still come out ahead despite the comically bad round trip efficiency of the process. The big variable there is whether it actually is possible to get the cost of electrolysers way down.
If you look at the pipeline of lithium projects, whether that's spodumene mining or brine wells or whatever, and consider the timeline required to permit and bring into production a mining asset, it is almost inevitable that there will be a lithium (forget about Cobalt, Nickel, and whatever) shortage between 2025 and 2030. There is unfortunately just not that much that can be done about it now given those timelines, not to mention the time required to qualify the output of those processes as battery grade or the construction of the chemical plants and cathode factories. This isn't a problem that even more distant technologies like hydrogen will help with though, we'll just have to ride it out.
posted by atrazine at 2:57 AM on December 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
That is the entire life of an electricity system operator unfortunately.
Widespread V2G will be enough to solve a lot of the challenges of the diurnal solar PV cycle and reduce the use of gas peakers. At some point you need additional storage to deal with a 1:20 weather event and that can't be done using any kind of diurnal battery because you only need it very infrequently so the capital cost per unit of energy stored has to be unbelievably low, efficiency doesn't matter so much since there will be thousands of hours of excess renewable electricity in any given year looking for a home.
Perez and others have shown that the cheapest way of keeping grids stable while renewable is to "over"build renewable capacity relative to demand since the cost of additional generation is <<<< cost of additional storage. Those grids are cheaper even if they throw away half of their generated electricity. I think they've shown that for most years this works but not that it has the appropriate guarantees for every year, so you need something else.
If you do something like turn that electricity into hydrogen, shove it into a salt cavern, and then burn it in a cheap gas turbine for your contingency supply you can still come out ahead despite the comically bad round trip efficiency of the process. The big variable there is whether it actually is possible to get the cost of electrolysers way down.
If you look at the pipeline of lithium projects, whether that's spodumene mining or brine wells or whatever, and consider the timeline required to permit and bring into production a mining asset, it is almost inevitable that there will be a lithium (forget about Cobalt, Nickel, and whatever) shortage between 2025 and 2030. There is unfortunately just not that much that can be done about it now given those timelines, not to mention the time required to qualify the output of those processes as battery grade or the construction of the chemical plants and cathode factories. This isn't a problem that even more distant technologies like hydrogen will help with though, we'll just have to ride it out.
posted by atrazine at 2:57 AM on December 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
I guess I’m not a purist because my response is great! Let’s try everything! Then we can learn. I’m not really sure what the alternative is at this point, and it seems like not trying would be the bigger mistake. I’m also looking at putting solar in on my roof at some point and the idea of using a vehicle as storage is intriguing, although timing might be an issue (but I personally often work evenings, so…)
posted by warriorqueen at 6:19 AM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by warriorqueen at 6:19 AM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Home batteries are pretty useless right now (in dollar terms). TLDR, get solar PV it's a no brainer, but battery tech isn't there yet, whether it's a wall installation or an EV.
I came across an interview with the founders of Finnish company PolarNightEnergy which bears on this. They are using power from wind and solar to store energy by simply heating sand. Sand is dirt cheap, is a good heat insulator and can be heated to several hundred degrees centigrade - so it makes quite an attractive energy store. PolarNight's prototypes use renewable electricity to heat the sand and then harvest that heat during the night or winter. They use resistive heating to turn excess energy from renewables into heat - with very high efficiency. They can then use the heat for district heating a community when it is needed.
posted by rongorongo at 6:49 AM on December 13, 2021
I came across an interview with the founders of Finnish company PolarNightEnergy which bears on this. They are using power from wind and solar to store energy by simply heating sand. Sand is dirt cheap, is a good heat insulator and can be heated to several hundred degrees centigrade - so it makes quite an attractive energy store. PolarNight's prototypes use renewable electricity to heat the sand and then harvest that heat during the night or winter. They use resistive heating to turn excess energy from renewables into heat - with very high efficiency. They can then use the heat for district heating a community when it is needed.
posted by rongorongo at 6:49 AM on December 13, 2021
So, the only areas I've ever been to that had sand in great abundance (and no ocean nearby) got super cold about five minutes after sunset. There was no heat to harvest at night.
I thought it might be a bad choice, but then I looked at this table to compare, and... Ok. For things that are cheap, abundant, and won't evaporate, sand is pretty good!
I wonder how they're dealing with the whole "good insulator" issue on the input end, though. There was some mention of a heat exchangers, but I feel it would have to have a massive surface area!
I'm totally on Team Try Everything
posted by Acari at 7:44 AM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
I thought it might be a bad choice, but then I looked at this table to compare, and... Ok. For things that are cheap, abundant, and won't evaporate, sand is pretty good!
I wonder how they're dealing with the whole "good insulator" issue on the input end, though. There was some mention of a heat exchangers, but I feel it would have to have a massive surface area!
I'm totally on Team Try Everything
posted by Acari at 7:44 AM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm totally on Team Try Everything
I'm on Team Try Everything with the caveat that we need to be cautious about investing in startups promising the future with nothing to show but videos and Photoshop slides.
I am not saying this to be critical about PolarNightEnergy, which I haven't looked into and know nothing about and may be a good technology.
It is just that 'promising the future' is a tactic often used to bring in investors that are guided enough by emotions to not do the necessary due diligence to consider if it is, or ever can be, real (Theranos is a recent one that comes to mind).
posted by eye of newt at 11:26 AM on December 13, 2021
I'm on Team Try Everything with the caveat that we need to be cautious about investing in startups promising the future with nothing to show but videos and Photoshop slides.
I am not saying this to be critical about PolarNightEnergy, which I haven't looked into and know nothing about and may be a good technology.
It is just that 'promising the future' is a tactic often used to bring in investors that are guided enough by emotions to not do the necessary due diligence to consider if it is, or ever can be, real (Theranos is a recent one that comes to mind).
posted by eye of newt at 11:26 AM on December 13, 2021
They are using power from wind and solar to store energy by simply heating sand.
Hah. I have a semi insane idea for a closed-loop energy recovery system in the home that doesn't exist, but theoretically...
You'd have solar PV running a single heat-pump that constantly pulls heat from a cold tank to a hot tank. (there's an interior loop of refrigerant that's more similar to what exists in a fridge on the cold side, while on the hot side that loop is immersed in hot water similar to what exists in a heat pump hot water tank)
The cold tank is used for your refrigerator and general home cooling needs.
The hot tank is used for showering, and general home heating needs.
This would replace the 4-5 separate heat pump systems used in each AC unit, fridge, and hot water system with a single integrated system that also serves as a pseudo battery.
Incoming fresh air comes into the house through a pipe within pipe heat exchanger so you don't lose heat in winter, or lose cool air in your house in summer. During hot showers in winter, incoming cold water at ambient also runs through a similar recovery system parallel to the shower drain system to recover waste heat from your hot shower.
You'd basically then just use grid electricity for stuff like electronics, lighting, cooking (induction system).
posted by xdvesper at 7:00 PM on December 13, 2021
Hah. I have a semi insane idea for a closed-loop energy recovery system in the home that doesn't exist, but theoretically...
You'd have solar PV running a single heat-pump that constantly pulls heat from a cold tank to a hot tank. (there's an interior loop of refrigerant that's more similar to what exists in a fridge on the cold side, while on the hot side that loop is immersed in hot water similar to what exists in a heat pump hot water tank)
The cold tank is used for your refrigerator and general home cooling needs.
The hot tank is used for showering, and general home heating needs.
This would replace the 4-5 separate heat pump systems used in each AC unit, fridge, and hot water system with a single integrated system that also serves as a pseudo battery.
Incoming fresh air comes into the house through a pipe within pipe heat exchanger so you don't lose heat in winter, or lose cool air in your house in summer. During hot showers in winter, incoming cold water at ambient also runs through a similar recovery system parallel to the shower drain system to recover waste heat from your hot shower.
You'd basically then just use grid electricity for stuff like electronics, lighting, cooking (induction system).
posted by xdvesper at 7:00 PM on December 13, 2021
Omg. Yes, companies should not lie to investors. But there is a huge difference between pretending your blood lab machine works while running blood to others labs and delivering inaccurate medical results to people and a government- academic- and industry-sponsored project.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:30 PM on December 13, 2021
posted by warriorqueen at 7:30 PM on December 13, 2021
For another perspective on the "Sand as thermal energy storage" - see this video from SimpleTek - rather than promoting a startup - his perspective is more on something you could build yourself (if you are an engineer working on a budget of maybe $10-15K) - with some suggested instructions - the comments sections - which seems to involve a number of people experimenting with this sort of set up - is interesting too.
posted by rongorongo at 3:55 AM on December 14, 2021
posted by rongorongo at 3:55 AM on December 14, 2021
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Good thing Tesla, Ford, Chevy, and other companies make those battery packs.
posted by ocschwar at 9:10 PM on December 11, 2021 [3 favorites]