Are electric cars really saving anything? This video says no...

[jerry33]

Actually ... in a couple of years time Autonomous vehicles will be here, and I will no longer own a car and just summon an Uber Autonomous Vehicle when I need one, so the fleet size will reduce to match the maximum number of concurrent, shared, journeys and perhaps the opportunity to use car batteries to augment the grid will go away, or diminish.

So basically, every time you want to go somewhere you're willing to wait 30-90 minutes for a car with questionable cleanliness and mechanical condition to free up. I don't see this as reasonable. What happens if you haven't unloaded all your stuff and the car decides to leave. This is as silly as everyone bicycling to work and not using cars (I did this for a number of years, but most people won't).

 

[WannabeOwner]

No, if the service is rubbish I won't use; providers will have to achieve a price and quality point for the consumers they want to attract. Most journeys I make I could book-in-advance, certainly 90 minutes in advance. Of course if I stop owning a car then I would have to be sure that 100% of my journeys could be achieved with pre-booking without major loss of convenience. If I buy a train ticket online (in the UK) the price is significantly cheaper, particularly if bought well in advance, than a ticket bought at the point of travel. (I've never understood why, the train companies don't lay on more trains to meet demand!! so I presume it is to pocket money from people who buy tickets, with no refund, and then are unable to travel. We have lots of "cons" like that in this country.)

I live in the country, deciding to have "no vehicle" and change to "public transport" would be a very significant step, The same argument applies to the bus service, generally somewhere between poor and very-poor in rural areas around here, and also with my in laws who, IMHO, are now of an age that they shouldn't be driving, but there is no realistic alternative - an Uber Summon Vehicle would be a good solution for them and they could quite easily plan their life around a 90 minute delay - they live in a small village, neighbours will help out if there was a sudden need; a call for an ambulance is quicker than driving spouse to hospital; supermarkets have online shopping with home delivery; and so on, so an Uber Summon Vehicle might well be the solution for elderly people in rural areas here.

If I lived in a Town making the No Owned Car decision would be easier (your points are still valid though), so for me and my rural situation the service would have to be very good, although for others maybe if the price is significantly cheaper than buying & owning a car that might be sufficient reason.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I'm interested in that point as my personal view has changed. Why do you think cheap storage is needed to improve the grid? (I think the Grid in the UK is better developed than in the USA [but I don't know that for a fact] so that may be a factor?)

I used to think that PowerWall was needed "now". I've changed my view to storage not being needing at all until the production from renewables exceeds demand (which I think is quite a long way off). Up to that point power companies can turn off other sources when renewable supply is high; we may not be well endowed, currently, with generation equipment which can be turned on-and-off, and Solar and Wind would be wasted if not used, but presumably over the next decade we could concentrate on building fossil fuel generating power that can be run stop/start. Currently when the Number One Soap finishes / goes to an advertising break, and people start boiling kettles, over here in the UK we fire up instant-start power-stations (Gas Turbine I think) to cope with the demand. Presumably similar problem in USA, although time-zone spread may mean that peak power, for evening cooking etc. on winter evenings, may be spread and less dramatic than in UK? We buy power from France etc. (one hour time difference to us) to help with that, but across the time zones of the USA perhaps there is a much better "opportunity"?

I also think that once we have smart metering, and my power company can tell my house to "adjust" its usage, that peak-power requirement will a) be reduced (e.g. my fridge & freezer will turn off for a while) and also b) my car battery's energy can be "sold" back to the grid. So when I get home at, say, 6PM to 10PM I can sell the remaining power from my car battery and from 10PM to 6AM it can re-charge - using cheap rate overnight electricity (currently at least 50% cheaper here in the UK) as excess is produced (currently from always-running generators, but in future increasingly from Wind). Perhaps car batteries are the only/majority? storage requirement we will need, going forwards?

I read somewhere that in June or July last year the solar panels on people's houses produced 99% of the domestic electricity usage at that time. That leaves out all the business usage, plus we have almost zero AirCon in domestic houses in the UK, and no lights on in the house on a summer's day , and everyone was out at work ... but still! it seemed to be more to me than I would have guessed

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Actually ... in a couple of years time Autonomous vehicles will be here, and I will no longer own a car and just summon an Uber Autonomous Vehicle when I need one, so the fleet size will reduce to match the maximum number of concurrent, shared, journeys and perhaps the opportunity to use car batteries to augment the grid will go away, or diminish. All the Uber vehicles will park up somewhere when demand slopes off in the evening, but their software will have optimised vehicle usage to select a vehicle for a journal to use up battery energy optimally so that it returns to base for recharging "empty". Ergo none available to put back into the grid.

There again, I suppose that that software model could easily be changed if the price of selling back to the grid was higher than the, subsequent, cost to recharge. no Uber vehicles to be found at 8PM because they've all found somewhere to plug in and SELL their battery contents to the grid at a better price than Punters are paying for a ride!

Yes, the US grid sucks ass, and after the idea of the Smart Grid was raised, everybody said it was a great idea, and then regional protectionism (whether economic or environmental) kicked in, there were arguments about who would pay what and nothing happened. Meanwhile in Europe, HVDC interconnects are going in all over the place.

I think cheap storage is necessary because the problem is no longer _generating_ cheap, clean, sustainable, domestic electricity. The problem is that it's largely not _dispatchable_. Cheap storage allows affordable conversion of non-dispatchable sources into dispatchable sources, _and_ allows for time-shifting of distribution to match production (while at the same time increasing reliability). With matching storage available you can much more easily add non-dispatchable variable renewables to the grid. Cheap storage revolutionize electricity in an incredibly positive way.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Yes, the US grid sucks ass, and after the idea of the Smart Grid was raised, ... nothing happened

Pity

I think cheap storage is necessary because the problem is no longer _generating_ cheap, clean, sustainable, domestic electricity. The problem is that it's largely not _dispatchable_. Cheap storage allows affordable conversion of non-dispatchable sources into dispatchable sources, _and_ allows for time-shifting of distribution to match production (while at the same time increasing reliability). With matching storage available you can much more easily add non-dispatchable variable renewables to the grid. Cheap storage revolutionize electricity in an incredibly positive way.

I only question whether it is needed "now"?

I don't think we are close to having enough Solar / Wind renewable generation to be close to have a problem dispatching it - but I'm happy to be enlightened. maybe the problem is that we also have lots of, old, non-dispatchable generation which is not renewable and whilst that ran at a predictable rate and could be planned the recent addition of unpredictable Solar & Wind now creates a problem with dispatch?

Personally I think that storage is, currently, very expensive. I am prepared to buy a battery car, but I don't think I can be persuaded to buy a battery for the house. I suppose my reasoning is that we have high tax on Petrol / Diesel over here, and with an EV I will save £ 100 (US$ 145) on fuel every month for each 10,000 miles I drive a year. At 25,000 miles a year that £ 250 per month on my finance contract gets me a much nicer, battery, car

But we have no/little tax on oil for domestic heating / electricity in UK, so spending £ n0,000 (or even £ n,000) on a battery for the house would be a hard decision to make (and I suspect it would be hard for a corporate / power company to make too).

i.e. I think battery storage only becomes a factor once we have significant renewal energy that cannot be dispatched and will thus go to waste and my uneducated assumption is that we are nowhere near that pivot-point (plus my view that rather than buying a House Battery I will be able to just use deploy my Car's Battery instead )

I may be completely missing something though?

 

[pmt32577]

I agree that here in the UK the idea of battery storage for a house makes no direct economic sense. However, what may tip the balance is and make it a sensible option in some cases is the threat of grid failure and brown/black outs. The gap between available power and demand is getting closer and closer with coal stations being closed by suppliers because of the way the market is structured. I work at home so power failure could interrupt my ability to work.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I work at home so power failure could interrupt my ability to work.

I work from home too, and I have a round socket (don't know the technical term) fitted on the outside of the house into which I can plug my generator, after I've lugged it round from the shed. I have an isolating switch (disconnects the house from the mains and to the generator instead) so that power from my generator cannot feed back into the grid with the potential to injure a linesman working on the fault. Perhaps a similar isolation switch would then allow Tesla battery to power the house?

For the same risk (of linesman being injured) Solar PV does not generate during a power cut, however my understanding is that PV would work once it sensed power on the line (from my generator) so perhaps a similar connection to Tesla would allow PV to run?? then on sunny power-cut days PV will power the house, and probably recharge Tesla too

I can recommend the generator route, along with going to the trouble of having the isolating switch and outdoor socket fitted. We don't get a lot of power cuts but they are frustrating, and every few years a winter storm means we have no power for a few days (I live in a rural location). I have to turn the power off to pretty much everything in the house (generator is only 2.2kva, I really ought to get a 5kva model), but we can limp along, and I can work, until the power comes back on.