[deckofficer]

As there is such a cross section of professionals and skilled tradesman on this forum, I'm seeking your ideas on V2G that is starting to be implemented. If your an EE, work for a power company, or have researched V2G, please participate, this thread is for you. If you just want to argue without basis (trolling), just ignore this thread.

The concept pertains to the Smart Grid, and how electric vehicles when plugged in, will communicate and either take a charge, or during peak usage, offer up some of their battery's stored energy to help flatten the peak demand.

Vehicle-to-grid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks ahead of time for keeping this thread civil and informative.

Bob

[deckofficer]

To get more folks thinking on the terms of an electric car, the progress of the battery needs to be studied. For the first 100+ years the battery has been basically unchanged. When GM first rolled out the EV1 it was powered by lead acid batteries. They upgraded to Nickel Metal Hydride and the range of the EV1 went from 80 miles to 160 miles. After California was sued by both the auto makers and oil companies, they dropped the State mandate for 3% of all new cars sold in the state to be zero emission. GM then pulled the leases on all the EV1s and had the vehicles crushed. Chevron Oil bought the patents to Nickel Metal Hydride cells with a capacity of 10 a-hr and larger and buried it. Then came laptops, cell phones, smart phones, all powered by the high energy density of the lithium cell. Even the oil companies aren't wealthy enough to buy and bury the lithium cell when it is used in so many consumer items. Advances have continued until now we have lithium capable of storing the mass amount of energy to propel our cars. Think of it this way, until lithium you had two basic lead acid batteries for automotive use, the cranking battery for starting your car and the deep cycle battery for your boat and RV. Since most on this forum are familiar with their car's battery, here is what you get for that 65 pound lump of lead. Thin plates so that there is a lot of surface area which in turn gives high cranking amps but not many deep cycles. This works fine for starting your car because as soon as the engine starts your alternator takes over and tops off the cranking battery and also powers all of your loads. So, how would this battery do for storing and using electricity? Typical group 24 ratings is 65 a-hr, but due to the thin lead plates, shouldn't be discharged further than 20% DOD (depth of discharge) to still give an acceptable life. Their tougher thick plate cousins, the deep cycle battery will tolerate 50% DOD and give 500 cycles. The lithium cell will happily live with 80% DOD and return 2000 cycles. Take the battery you are all familiar with, 65 a-hr, and its usable energy is 12 volts X 65 a-hr X 0.20 DOD and you wind up with 156 w-hr usable energy storage. Compare this to the lithium battery in the Tesla S of 84,000 w-hr X 0.80 DOD = 67,200 usable w-hr. Big difference, and that is what is referred to as the lithium economy. Makes you think old Gene Roddenberry had an inside track to the future when he powered the Starship Enterprise with lithium crystals.

[LATECH]

Even with the phenominal amount of power offered by the lithium battery, I still wouldnt want to exercise its DOD to excess just to prop up the grid.
Also I would expect the cost of equiptment to interface the car to the grid, convert DC to AC and couple it safely would be costly.
California has lots of sun and wind, which would simplifiy charging the car when its parked in the daytime,and if you had a set of storage batterys at home charging during the day, all it would take is an inverter to plug the car into ar night to transfer the charge. I know that means parasitic loss from the storage/ exchange point , but if the only cost is the mill or panels and batterys... it is one step closer to cheap.
not intending to troll, just sayin..
Beside, if the grid sucked your car dry overnight...., but if it only discharged your exchange setup ....well you get the idea

[deckofficer]

That is my concern also. At the current price of the lithium cells, where is the break even point on selling your stored energy back to the grid. What has been discussed for the Smart Grid is constantly changing cost points per kilowatt hour purchased, all monitored by your home computer. You as the end user decide at what price point you want to heat water, dry clothes, run the dishwasher, and charge your electric car, and by WiFi your computer tells what energy loads to come on. The power companies, striving to take a 24 hour usage with the huge peaks and valleys and flatten it out, are changing the price points to accomplish this.

[NEW INTERIORS]

You make it sound like they will all be nuclear power plants..

[LATECH]

There are 30 2.5 megawatt windmills on the mountain behind my house.
Thats some wattage now. They turn most of the time.
Santa anna has some wind now. It would be the place for a windfarm, if the libs would allow it.
It would make sense to have a solar panel bank/and or windmill to charge the transfer station for the car, keeping it off the grid if possible ...completely.

[gearheadslife]

Originally Posted by deckofficer

That is my concern also. At the current price of the lithium cells, where is the break even point on selling your stored energy back to the grid. What has been discussed for the Smart Grid is constantly changing cost points per kilowatt hour purchased, all monitored by your home computer. You as the end user decide at what price point you want to heat water, dry clothes, run the dishwasher, and charge your electric car, and by WiFi your computer tells what energy loads to come on. The power companies, striving to take a 24 hour usage with the huge peaks and valleys and flatten it out, are changing the price points to accomplish this.

isn't it more like try'n to put off as long as possable upgrading the grid to the level it needs to be now,
this is a bandaid that will never fix the underlie'n issue.. the grid is to small..
very few will be home to do the wash at the low peak times, and not many businesses will change to 10pm to 6am to be off peak..
they need to stop farting around and upgrade the grid for the future.. and stop delaying it.. because the stockholders don't want to take the hit . when the utilities invest into the upgrades.. cause that all this is.. people will do the dishes /wash/charge the car when they have the time or need it.. even if it's a few pennies more..
the coffee shop is built on this fact..

[deckofficer]

Randy,

If we could only master cold fusion, I'm with you. The dangerous 1/2 life of spent nuclear fuel rods bothers me. After the tsunami induced nuke melt down in Japan, that is just too many years of having to protect that stuff.

LATECH,

In the right setting, those windmills just keeping spinning those megawatts.
I-10 Eastbound in the Track-T heading for Arizona.

[gearheadslife]

[QUOTE=deckofficer;1622488]Randy,

If we could only master cold fusion, I'm with you. The dangerous 1/2 life of spent nuclear fuel rods bothers me. After the tsunami induced nuke melt down in Japan, that is just too many years of having to protect that stuff.
[quote]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ thats not even an issue.. we here would not put a nke plant in an area with that many fault lines, and tsunami prone area.
nor. would we put the back up generators, in line of the tsunami wave..

totally bad engineering all around.. that never fly here

[LATECH]

Deckofficer....
No pollution from a windmill, and from the looks of the landscape...no love lost there either.
Good way to help the grid along in high demand areas.
I dont like spent radioactive material either. The WIPP in New Mexico is a scary thing.
I agree with the New Mexico people. I wouldnt want to live next door to that.

[LATECH]

Gearhead.... Japan has a limited land mass, and it is mostly on a fault line.
Without natural gas or oil wells, they have to play the cards they were dealt. Hence the nuke thing

[deckofficer]

You can load your dishwasher, and other appliances that either require a lot of wattage or hot water if electrically heated, and they come on via a command from your home PC when the price point that you preset is reached by the ever changing cost the power companies are offering to flatten the cycles. And if you don't think that adds up to a hill of beans, then do the numbers. Washing dishes and a load of laundry with an electric hot water heater will consume 15 kwh X 30.5 days per month = 457.5 kwh per month just for these two loads. If your lucky enough to only be paying $0.15 per kwh, then $68.63 that can be reduced by 1/2 on a swinging price scale. Now scale up to charging your car and you can see the savings.

[gearheadslife]

Originally Posted by LATECH

Gearhead.... Japan has a limited land mass, and it is mostly on a fault line.
Without natural gas or oil wells, they have to play the cards they were dealt. Hence the nuke thing

oh, I understand that... but where they put the back up cooling generators, was the biggest problem.. as they couldn't cool it ,as the genertaors where DOA..
wind power... they really need to make them look like the old farm windmills.. so more areas will
allow them..

[deckofficer]

I just see the new lithium economy as a steeping stone to our future. Can you envision cold fusion mastered and scaled down in size? You would take off on your month long vacation (in the future, we here in the States adopt European work schedules) in your fully self contained motorhome, with fully electric galley, drive train, mini cold fusion and lithium buffer, and the wife asks "do you need to fill up?" and your reply is "No dear, remember we just fueled two years ago." How sweet would that be?

[LATECH]

Capacitive storage would be the Ideal technology as the compnents are as simple as a stone axe. Getting it down to a usable size / power supply is the big challenge. Lithium Ion is a good stepping stone . Probably not the end all solution.