Solar Payments - Fairness Debate - NY Times - Technical Question

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Please see the link below for a NY Times article on PV Solar and Net Metering. To my mind it is a balanced article, allowing advocates for both sides to give their views. No, doubt some will call the article biased, and the NY Times a shill, because it dared to allow other than pro net metering voices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/business/solar-payments-set-off-a-fairness-debate.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&

--My question, however technical rather than political, see the below quote:

"The federal Department of Energy envisions a future in which a typical homeowner might feed power into the system from solar panels, small wind turbines or electric vehicles sitting idle in the garage, offsetting charges for power used at a later time and helping provide energy to the system during periods of high demand."

--Now, I confess that Amory Lovins, and Mike Simpson of the Rocky Mountain Institute have mentioned something like this, see link and quote below.

http://livinggreenmag.com/2012/01/23/green-business/amory-lovins-leads-oregon-workshop-on-smart-garage-concept/

"An integrated system that allows vehicles to feed their battery charge back into the grid can bring stability to the grid during blackouts and peak demand. According to RMI’s Mike Simpson. “By some estimates, a battery electric vehicle, with about 40 kilowatt-hours of usable energy, could power an entire residential block for more than an hour if necessary.”

--Would this sort of thing ever be practical, given that you would have to forego driving the vehicle while it is powering the grid, and while it is recharging for the second time. Include reduced battery life for driving purposes, additional, equipment costs, and inverter and charging loses, both ways. So you would pay for downloading a kilowatt which by the time you re-uploaded it would have shrunk do to losses.

--My question, at last, is; Does the above DOE statement make any sense with regard to EVs.

"A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts. "
Albert Einstein 1879 1955

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[tom66]

--Would this sort of thing ever be practical, given that you would have to forego driving the vehicle while it is powering the grid, and while it is recharging for the second time. Include reduced battery life for driving purposes, additional, equipment costs, and inverter and charging loses, both ways. So you would pay for downloading a kilowatt which by the time you re-uploaded it would have shrunk do to losses.

Yes, it seems like a reasonable idea upfront, though I'm not sure how useful it will be.

Charge/discharge losses are a couple percent so virtually negligible.

Let's say you get home from work and the power goes out due to an unfortunate squirrel or storm or some similar event. The power company might have to send out an engineer to get the fault fixed in several hours time. During that time customers are without power and upset at the power company. Also, their food is defrosting in the refrigerator, and their heater isn't working (which could be dangerous to elderly or ill persons.) And, they can't watch TV and advertisements (though I doubt the electric co cares.)

However, the question is will the power co be willing to pay for the electricity, which will almost certainly be at more than purchase price? Either they value customers more, and will pay, but I'd guess the majority wouldn't. Unless it was a very long outage - but in which case, you'd need more than one electric car feeding into the grid - and by that time, you could probably get a diesel genset down to the area instead of paying customers for stored energy.

Also you've got the extra cost in that now your 4kW charger is also a 40kW inverter (as per the article - 40kWh for ~1 hour+) This adds significant expense to the charger, so will the auto companies be willing to include it? Unlikely. Unless you can figure out a way to tap off the inverter power from the car going to the motor - but that's a pretty difficult operation - and it's dangerous too. The majority of electric cars use 300-400V systems, incompatible with the US electrical grid, and newer ones are moving to 500V systems. I think the Tesla might use 800-1000V, but I'm not 100% on that.

So although it sounds like a neat idea, cost is likely to be the killer.

[poptones]

Wires in many places are owned by cooperatives. That means the community owns the wires and the power company pays for the delivery of electricity. So who's to say this model won't develop into a peer to peer sharing? Electricity has the same price no matter where it comes from, you are billed by what you use, you are credited what you contribute, and the power company gets to set the price based on all this. Power companies would negotiate with the coop on how much "bulk discount" they get by serving as a "seed hub" thus allowing them to generate profit. That's essentially what they do now - they buy power from this facility or grid, then resell it. All that's needed is to create citizen cooperatives to organize this model.