Changing times

"Though EV battery storage will be a major element of any electric grid storage system, much, much more will be needed beyond the capacity of EV vehicles"

That is incorrect. On what do you base that statement? See below.



EV storage capacity

Good questions. My main point with the article was to establish that there will be plenty of storage capacity embodied in EVs on as they proliferate as expected.

We do have some idea what the answers to your questions are going to be. First, the storage capacity is owned by the vehicle owner, at least in the EV ownership model that we expect to be most comment in the US. In some other markets many China 3rd party battery ownership is quite comment, as we've discussed in this forum before.

Regardless of who owns the storage that investor will expect to be compensated for offering access to his asset. This is capitalism in action after all. The mechanisms for doing that are already in place in many of the US electricity markets. Day ahead, hour ahead, frequency support, and time of use markets exist now. The pricing in these markets is nodal, meaning that pricing is specific to the level of congestion at different geographic locations on the grid. The prices at some of these congested nodes on some hot summer afternoons can be very lucrative if you have capacity available.

So the markets exist for electricity to be bought and sold to allow production and demand to balance out. Not only does this apply to energy producers but there are also demand side aggregators selling "negawatts" via load reduction. You can sign up to allow your air conditioner to be set back remotely under certain conditions for a given time, and get paid to do it. "Negawatts" of load reduction are the equivalent of bringing up a peaking plant to produce more energy as far as the grid managers are concerned.

Dispatch of on site battery storage works the same way. Several companies including Tesla, have business entities set up to do exactly that. So far Tesla is just doing it in a trial basis with their Powerwall customers, but the extension to EVs with bidirectional chargers is the obvious next step.

As for battery life, it is expected that Li batteries will outlive the vehicles they are in so that shouldn't be an issue. More of an issue will be to assure that the vehicle owner isnt stranded because his battery has just been fully discharged by the utility right before he wants to go somewhere. Tesla is addressing that with their Powerwall systems by allowing the homeowner to set the allowable discharge level based on his expected usage. So if you are planning a long trip the next day you should be able to opt out of the capacity program prior to your departure.

So here's my question.

We have an excellent EV battery technology available today. Does the job well for most uses, and is undergoing continuous improvement and enjoying the benefits of economies of scale due to massive investment. But it, like all large scale industrial activity, has it's issues.

But those are nowhere near comparable to the enormous environmental and social impacts of oil extraction, transportation, refining, more transportation. and all the pollution associated with those. That's not even mentioning the GHG emissions from the vehicles thenselves or the dependence of oil prices on the geopolitical situation du jour. Putin sneezes and we have $5.00 gas...

Would you actually choose an ICE vehicle with all those problems over an EV with Li batteries, assuming range was not an issue for you?

If so then IMO that is a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good, and falls into the same category as those who reject nuclear power because you have to deal with the radioactive waste, wind turbines because they can kill birds, or solar because it uses what otherwise could be farmland.

Nothing is or ever will be the perfect solution, the scale needed to meet humans' energy needs is just to big.

Let's hold out for this:

Mr Fusion

I personally don't believe that EV batteries are "the" solution. What I do believe is that there is a wide array of little solutions to the much larger problem. No one thing will fix this for us, but each and every one of the little solutions will hopefully add up to a way out of the problem we've drilling ourselves into for the last century.