Solid State Batteries should be available soon. Probably about the time that most cars have bidirectional charging.in a couple of years. That is when the business models and pricing structures will have to change to accommodate them. It doesn't make sense for Power Companies to make huge investments in transmission infrastructure because it won't be needed by the time it is done.
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CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion
- Thread starter jjrandorin
- Start date
One huge advantage of Car Batteries is that they are included in the price of the car. Soon, the price of EVs will be less than the price of ICEs. So, you basically get the battery for free when you buy the car. Or you buy the batteries, and you get the car for free. These are typically very large batteries. Often 100kWh.
Two critical technologies be common in the next few years. 1) Cars with bidirectional charging. And 2) Solid State Batteries. When Solid State Batteries are available, degradation of batteries will no longer be an issue. The batteries will last longer than the car, so you will be willing to use the car's battery to send electricity to the grid.
Will it make economic sense to send electricity to the grid? In the middle of the day, availability of electricity will far exceed the demand for it. The price will be very low. Maybe .02/kWh. In the evening as the sun goes down and people are cooking dinner, the price will increase significantly. Perhaps to .42/kWh. If I can sell 50 kWh of electricity every day, the profit will be $600/month. Calculation: .40 /kWh * 30 days * 50 kWh = $600/month. 100 kWh /day will give you $1200/month. That will make the car payment, and pay for the car in just a few years. Yes, it will make sense.
There are a couple of other details. If I have solar panels on my roof at home, but park my car at work during the day, does this still make sense?
The utility business model will have to change. Each neighborhood will have a micro-grid. Consumers will have to pay a small amount for the maintenance of the local power lines. But there will not be a charge for sending electricity within the grid. If you sell electricity to your neighbor, you will get the same amount that your neighbor paid. The micro-grid will just act as an accountant for the transaction.
If you generate your electricity at home, and charge your car at work, there won't be anyone taking a cut.
The other big detail here is that pricing will be dynamic. Everyone who wants to use electricity will be matched up with everyone who has electricity to sell. If more people want to buy, the price will go up. If more people want to sell, the price will go down. The cars will provide the flexibility in the system. If everyone wants to charge their car at the same time, the price will go up. With the higher price, some of the cars will automatically wait until later to charge at a lower price. If lots of people want to cook dinner or turn on the AC in the evening, the price will go up. Then more cars will be willing to sell electricity from their batteries.
If your car is not at home, then you can buy electricity from your neighbor's cars. When your neighbor's car is not at home, you can sell to them.
Using this model in areas that have lots of sunshine will allow a transition to a 99% clean grid in just a few years.
With Pge care, our off peak ev rate just went up to .1809 (if I remember correctly). This is winter and summer, until the next tariff change. With timing big uses off peak, including pre cooling house to 68 to float the rest of the day (or at least to part peak), we cut our bill at least 100 a month even though we added ev charging.
Solar can’t beat care in current form. Solar gets worse when the monthly fee with lower kWh starts.
Even a lease at .20 per will get worse soon.
The real issue is simply doing nothing now, no new Solar, until the new rate structure starts. Only a fool would add Solar before then.
Solar can’t beat care in current form. Solar gets worse when the monthly fee with lower kWh starts.
Even a lease at .20 per will get worse soon.
The real issue is simply doing nothing now, no new Solar, until the new rate structure starts. Only a fool would add Solar before then.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
You don't get the battery for free. They are an integrated unit, which means when the battery wears out, the car is less useful, and eventually junked because it's hard to replace the batteries. Tried to price a new pack for your Tesla? You won't think the battery is free.
Batteries are going to be one of two things:
- A consumable asset which wears out as you use it
- A super-long-life asset which is wasted if you don't use it
I have seen it argued that some V2G systems will be so low power they don't degrade the battery. If so that could move you into #2.
Absent that, if you move 100kWh into and out of your car battery, that's like putting 400 miles on your battery. Or maybe it's not as bad, maybe it's only like putting 200 miles on your battery. But you don't want to put in a new pack, not ever, so when you put 200 miles on the battery you are putting 200 miles on the car, without driving it. Or whatever other number you want to name. If it's very small, V2G could make sense. But 200 miles is probably about $60 of depreciation. Maybe the power grid will pay you more than that for the energy and so it's a win. On some hot summer nights it could be.
But consider the alternative, which is the grid/home battery that's coming. I predict that it will be much cheaper than a car battery -- eventually, it isn't now. When it is cheaper you will be asking, "should I use up my car battery's life to sell some power to the grid, or should I use up my grid battery's life at a lower cost and make more money selling that power to the grid?"
It all comes down to a question we don't know -- how much of your car battery's life will get used up putting power in and out for V2G.
Then there are other factors. People like to keep their car full, so they can hop in and drive far. Sell the power to the grid and you have reduced your range that day. May be fine, may not be. The grid wants power from 6pm to 9pm on hot days. Many people are still driving and commuting at 6pm. The grid won't need your power when the sun is up. It might want it on a hot rainy day though.
There is an irony here, which is that that Tesla vehicle batteries behave more like #1 for the first year especially, then less of that through year 5 - both age-related and use-related.; then basically behaves more like #2. Their own sustainability reports basically have stated that degradation flattens out, and kudos to them, a lot of it is attributable to the efforts they put into thermal management, BMS, etc - the same cannot be said for say, Nissan Leaf batteries, which behave like #1 til they become unusable.
Now I always like to shame the sustainability report, because they only talk about battery pack life in terms of degradation, when in fact we see the earlier batteries failing before that due to many other factors, like water intrusion, time-bombed parts, electronic (not electric) part aging, etc. But if we're only considering degradation, then in the long run they are like #2.
So why don't we just use V2G from vehicle Year 5 onwards then? At worst, the example $60/200mi degradation is less then half by that point, since the vehicle is worth less. But at best, the battery degradation has become like #2, so there would then be almost no depreciation impact, as added cycles at that point don't impact the battery capacity much.
But on that note, rather than using 5-10 year old vehicles, what happened to taking old EOL vehicle batteries at <70% capacity, and repurposing the salvage batteries towards home backup and other uses? I don't think there are that many old batteries in the supply chain yet, because there weren't that many cars 5 years ago, and many salvage batteries are probably directed towards remanufactured batteries for replacement. But in another 5-10 years, there should be hundreds of thousands of serviceable used batteries, with typically at least 70% of 75kwh+ capacity (so at least equal to 3 Powerwalls, and already in the #2 phase of their degradation).
The only thing that I see missing from this, is that the excellent thermal management of a Tesla vehicle battery is in the car, not in the battery pack, if you take it out of the car for home storage, maybe the degradation becomes more like #1 again, or worse. But it's still >3 Powerwalls of capacity, with degradation no worse than 3 actual Powerwall 1/2/2+ (maybe not comparable to LFP-based Powerwall 3)...
that is called second life batteries. I looked into starting a company to do that, but seemed that the liability risk was too large if you took batteries out of crashed cars. Would have to wait for cars that are "retired". That said, there are companies doing it
This would have been cool to see realized (from 2016):
BMW i3 Batteries to Be Recycled for Home Use
BMW announces a home energy storage system that uses the batteries from i3 cars. Read more at Car and Driver.
www.caranddriver.com
anyone try the solar calculator on PG&E website? I just tried it. Did not upload my bill data as I already have solar. I just entered an ave monthly bill of $425.
It came back with $26K solar only with $7K incentives. Said I would save $225/mo with a 7 year payback. Solar plus battery (forgot to write down the cost) came back with 8 year payback. What numbers are they using for system cost? It did not tell me the PV size or how many batteries. I don't see how this is possible under NEM3
It came back with $26K solar only with $7K incentives. Said I would save $225/mo with a 7 year payback. Solar plus battery (forgot to write down the cost) came back with 8 year payback. What numbers are they using for system cost? It did not tell me the PV size or how many batteries. I don't see how this is possible under NEM3
I thought the CPUC already stated payback would be much longer for solar alone under NEM3.
It feels a bit perverse to rely on PG&E to calculate solar payback period when they can uniquely influence it directly.
Could be. But the rate structure for the big 3 CA providers, by law, will be changing the o a flat $ fee plus a lesser kWh rate. Supposed to happen on 2024, but could be delayed I suppose.
Thus, the costs used for comparison now will be different than future costs. Thus my opinion no one should add solar until the new rate structure is official.
I did not think that had passed yet. I certainly agree with you. There are some Solar installers posting on Nextdoor in my area that are claiming that you can get 6 or 7 year payback with NEM3. I suspect they are using that PG&E calculator. Thats why I tried it
Just like a company who sold solar to some folks who have basically 100% shading from trees all year long.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
There are some calculators that will tell you what angle to mount your panels at. For NEM2 it tends to be just a bit west of South, but under NEM3 I could see it being a fair bit more west. The reality is the only time you are likely to get real payback from the grid under NEM3 is after 5pm on those hot summer days and that needs a more westerly mounting. The big payoff comes after 6pm but for that you probably need due west (or tracking.) Of course, for your own household load you want enough power from 3 to 6 to meet it all, and if you have air conditioning you want to be sure to be able to power that and your owner minor loads in the afternoon. Charge your car from 9am to 3pm.
The law forcing the change passed a year or more ago. It is supposed to start in 2024.
How will this work for customers under NEM? Will the fixed fee be outside of the NEM calc?
What's interesting (or sneaky) is that PG&E is requesting a 26% rate increase before this goes into effect. So they increase 26% so that they will have the same or similar per kWh rates if the income based fee lowers the per kWh rate
Residential solar is getting crushed by high interest rates and regulatory changes
Many installers are filing for bankruptcy and stocks have crashed 15% to 30% or more based on weak guidance.
pv-magazine-usa.com
"NEM 3.0 slashed compensation for delivering local, clean electricity generated by a rooftop solar array to your neighbors. Rates paid by the utility for exporting solar were cut by about 80%. Installations have pulled back by 40% to 80% in California following the decision."
Does anyone know the result of new home construction and NEM3.0? Not that CA has much new home construction, but I believe there was a blurb that it had to be financially worthwhile before solar can be installed or you can opt-out.
Since my opinion has been it's just not worthwhile anymore under NEM3.0, has anyone seen new homes/apartments without solar now?
When the backlog of NEM2.0 installs are done, I think there will be 80%+ job losses in CA due to this. Maybe when the laid off workers and economic impact spreads more, they will look to revise it again to something more middle of the road.
Since my opinion has been it's just not worthwhile anymore under NEM3.0, has anyone seen new homes/apartments without solar now?
When the backlog of NEM2.0 installs are done, I think there will be 80%+ job losses in CA due to this. Maybe when the laid off workers and economic impact spreads more, they will look to revise it again to something more middle of the road.
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