Bidirectional Electric Vehicle charging - could this be a game changer to support widespread EV adoption whilst strengthening the grid?

Jon Steward said:

https://youtu.be/K8Nz-4eEBTw

Mark P Mills gave this speech on the Economics and Future of Electric Vehicles on November 12.

Well.worth an hour of anyone's time to listen to him.

Thanks for the link, I did listen to Mark P Mills speech…

I'll start with the positive points:

He highlighted 2 key challenge areas: the production of the EV battery and the need to upgrade the network to support the additional load.

Relating these challenges back to the message of my original post - both can be eased with a "bi-directional charging" (V2G) approach as this could:
(i) reduce the demand for house batteries
(ii) maximally leverage the investment in the EV's battery (for energy storage as well as transport)
(iii) ease the peak load on the network as a consequence of the energy storage (and hence reduce / defer the network investment need).

However, his views on EV battery end of life are simply wrong: "when the battery is exhausted it's garbage because its electrochemistry is just exhausted".
I know from personal experience (15 years ago as General Manager of a metals recycling venture) that Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled with high (>95%) recovery rates to produce high quality materials ready to manufacture new batteries.
Just taking a "common sense" view of this, why would anyone "throw away" a concentrated source of strategic materials when these have a high value?

I was also very concerned about his view of CO2 emissions: "if you burn oil you make carbon dioxide that's the point of burning it … it's not a pollutant it's an objective of the activity".
Despite claiming to understand climate science, he doesn’t seem to understand that there is a need to reduce CO2 emissions.

In summary, nothing he said detracts from the potential role V2G could play in support of EV rollout - but I won’t be wasting any more of my time following his thoughts.

Stuart

Due to its majority Nuclear generation, they can endulge in using energy without the worry of black out.

Probably fairer to say they have different constraints - their difficulty is responding to short term peaks in demand - so they have to use techniques (such as a 30A limit for domestics) that might feel quite draconian to us ... but with a little engineering nous proved to be quite workable.

If each house has a 5KW heat pump running 24/7

It's a pretty poor house average size house that needs 15kW of heat to keep it warm (presuming a COP of 3) (don't be fooled by the size of typical gas boilers - combi boilers are usually sized for the instantaneous domestic hot water demand, rather than space heating and even conventional boilers were typically oversized to 'be on the safe side', to give quick heat up from cold, and meet the next standard size up). The better answer of course is to insulate, insulate, insulate.  If I can insulate my probably slightly larger than average 1900s stone built semi so that it can stay warm on the coldest Pennine nights for around 3kW, I suspect there's quite a bit of scope to lower demand. New builds should be substantially better than older housing of course, and would have been better still if the government of time hasn't caved in and failed to implement the 2016 building as originally intended -  which even by now would have given us about 1.5 million far better insulated homes.

Someone will be in control of my energy, decreeing when I can have it and when not.

As was ever the case. I don't think anyone's suggesting rota cuts or anything of that nature though. More likely are variable time-of-use tariffs, so those that can will switch their consumption to times of lower demand, so leaving capacity for those than really want it at peak times. Not so different in principle to the old E7/E10 tariffs. Likewise back-feeding from EVs would presumably only happen with the owner's informed consent and within limits (e.g. remaining capacity) they agreed to. If you really wanted to keep your EV at 100% you'd have that option, likewise others who'd like to help out, still have enough capacity for the next day's motoring and earn a few quid into the bargain would have that choice as well.

  - Andy.

Hello Jon:

I watched the speech by Mark Mills yesterday and while it had some excellent points it does failed to mention the current economic situation in the US - high personal debt loads, overpriced new car prices, high insurance (both property and auto) costs, and high interest loan rates..

Peter Brooks

Hello Mike:

When one lives in an area which is prone to have annual hurricanes and tornadoes the power company has active ongoing programs to harden the complete interstructure (example replacing wooden poles with concrete). The local pole based transformers feeding houses in my area only have a life of about 15 years and take less than 2 houses to replace.

Peter Brooks

Peter Brooks said:

When one lives in an area which is prone to have annual hurricanes and tornadoes the power company has active ongoing programs to harden the complete interstructure (example replacing wooden poles with concrete). The local pole based transformers feeding houses in my area only have a life of about 15 years and take less than 2 houses to replace.

When I visited the states I was amazed/bewildered by their system of overheads, even in suburban areas - massive wooden poles but with just about everything hanging off them - HV, LV, phone lines, street lights, road signs, traffic lights the lot all one the same set of poles. Watched one crew replacing a pole which seemed to be done by letting all the cables dangle and lots of careful manoeuvring. I couldn't understand, especially given the extreme weather, why they didn't underground most of it, as is common elsewhere.

   - Andy.

Hello Andy:

When one buys a house and the land on which it stands, one gets a legal drawing showing the external dimensions of the house and it's orientation relative to the boundary of the lot.

It also shows the power line easement (usually 10 ft from one of the boundary lines).

If one places a pool on ones property and the power cable would cross over the pool water on its way into the house then the LV line is rerouted from the power pole using an underground cable.

When repairing the lines the people use special safety blankets draped over the active lines.

The overhead HV power lines provide a perch for the migrating birds when they fly south to escape the cold fronts this time of the year.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay Florida USA 

you need to visit the 220V bits of South America for the ultimate in pole re-use and scary wiring generally - North America is a bit of a tangle, but has nothing quite in comparison ! 

I have somewhere some pics from Brazil with 20kV overhead , 220V/380 3 phase transformers, and 3 phase _ N LV and underslung all manner of telecoms and cable TV cables. 

Worse the HV is earth-referenced as they make use of Single Wire Earth Return, to isolated farms and so on, so there is no 'big RCD' on the HV, so if an 18kV  line comes down it is probably still live as it hits the ground - unlike the UK, where if an 11 or 33kV line breaks, it usually isn't. (not sure about the USA on this - I think California has neutral free HV, but other regions do not seem to )

The funniest photos are a couple of chaps leaning bamboo ladders on the LV lines to climb up and work on the telecoms,

rgds,

Mike