Filed under: Emerging Technologies, EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, AutoblogGreen Exclusive
Electric cars could earn owner $500 a month
For AutoblogGreen's latest video round up we give you three interesting videos from AlwaysOn GoingGreen 2007. The video above is part of a panel discussion about electric cars with "Jessie Deeter, Producer, 'Who Killed the Electric Car?', Tom Gage, CEO, AC Propulsion, Gary Starr, Chairman, ZAP, Ian Clifford, CEO, ZENN Motor Company and Dennis Hogan, CFO, Phoenix Motorcars." Someone on the panel says a vehicle-to-grid system could earn electric car owners from $100 to $500 a month.
Below the fold are two more videos. The first is all about batteries with "Eric Wesoff, Greentech Media, David Vieau, CEO, A123 Systems, Saroj Sahu, CTO & Founder, Deeya Energy and Alan Gotcher, CEO, Altair Nanotechnologies." The second is about bio-fuels with "Peter Hanschen, Partner, Morrison & Foerster, Robert Walsh, President, LS9, Inc., Jonathan Wolfson, President & COO, Solazyme, Inc., John Melo, CEO, Amyris Biotechnologies and Steven Perricone, CEO & Co-Founder, BioFuelBox, Inc." Each video is between three and six minutes long.
[Source: YouTube]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ug 5:19PM (9/14/2007)
I just don't see the value proposition of V2G for consumers either. Electric cars really have no extra capacity to spare.
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DSGMP 5:41PM (9/14/2007)
Someone please enlighten me on v2g. If I drove my electric car to work and plugged it in, then the utility company needs some juice so they tap into my battery supply and pay me for it.Will I come out of work to go home and find my battery drained to a point I need to find a ride home and then back again the next day. If this is the case,who would want to plug in anywhere but at home?
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Lascelles Linton 5:44PM (9/14/2007)
DSGMP, ug, I think the logic is, when battery storage gets better and a car has hundreds of miles in stored energy, you can let the power company without worry of running out of energy for yourself. I assume an internal computer will calculate your average recharge time, miles driven and only allow the power company to take as much as you can spare.
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rgseidl 6:45PM (9/14/2007)
@ DSGMP -
there are two aspect to V2G. First, there is communications & control, which would let the utility temporarily interrupt rapid charging to avoid overloading the local grid. Especially in places that made a hash of electricity privatization and/or experienced rapid population growth (e.g. California), the gird is working near full capacity on hot summer days. Much-needed upgrades, especially wrt to so-called ride-through current as subsystems join or leave the grid, cannot be funded because end-user prices are regulated to appease the voters. Therefore, the utility would like to compensate by selectively taking major consumers (such as a rapidly charging EV) off the grid for the 10-20 seconds it takes to reconfigure the grid. It could also choose to merely throttle the power flow to the battery charger for a while.
The second V2G mode lets the grid operator use the vehicle batteries to provide ride-through power for that 10-20 seconds at a time. He may also choose to shallow cycle your battery to level its own load on the power generators, allowing them to produce electricity at higher efficiency and lower cost. However, the grid operator will not substantially discharge or cycle your EV battery, as that would shorten its life and/or make you think twice about buying your motive power from the grid rather than an oil company.
The idea behind V2G is that the utility would pay you, reflecting capital and operations costs avoided thanks to the use of your EV battery. The numbers being bandied about are high, in reality the grid operator will pay you as little as he can get away with and pocket the difference. In other words, V2G is a bootstrapping strategy to increase the number of PHEV/BEV early adopters. Once BEV technology becomes mainstream, it will be cheaper for the grid operator to buy his own batteries and discontinue V2G service contracts.
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GreyFlcn 2:30PM (9/15/2007)
V2G isn't going to happen until ultracapacitors hit the scene.
Whats more likely is that the batteries/caps will be sold aftermarket to utilities after they are not longer good enough for transport.
http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2007/06/photo_green_wom.html
Also whats likely is that instead of having V2G you will instead have "demand-response" peak shaving.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response#Electricity_grids_and_peak_demand_response
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/09/12/tesla-pgande-partner-on-smart-charging/
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Chris M 6:15PM (9/15/2007)
V2G benefits the power companies, which have to deal with a widely fluctuating power demand. To get vehicle owners to cooperate means making it worth their while to do so, by reduced electrical rates or even making a profit on energy returned to the grid.
Being able to schedule recharging during minimal demand times means not having to shut down "baseline" power plants or waste power. A discount could be given EV owners for charging during that time.
In some cases, it may be practical to delay charging or reduce the charging rate durning peak demand times, allowing the power companies to avoid buying expensive "peak" power or start up expensive peaker power plants.
If a vehicle has excess battery capacity and energy to spare - the driver isn't planning a long trip - a V2G car could sell that excess electricity back to the grid during peak power demand times, again, allowing the power companies to avoid buying even more expensive peak power. This doesn't require ultrasuperduper capacitors, it simply requires batteries with good energy density and long cycle life.
There are a lot of details to be worked out before V2G is implemented, including communication standards, connection standards, safety issues, rates and fees.
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Dave Schmetterer 5:03PM (9/16/2007)
rgseidl,
I wish they would help out early adopters by you know... actually building a PHEV that seats 4 and travels 40 miles at highway speed without using its ICE.
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Benjamin Becerra 7:11PM (2/28/2009)
Hi, I´m interested in having instaled an electric motor in my car , and looking for somebody who can send me information on how to build or buy an electric motor, tanks for any help provided at my e-mail.
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