A Prius That Gives Back To The Grid

Here's a question:

Given I've paid for charging my car, and that I've used more electricity in doing so than energy is stored in my car's battery (charging efficiency is less than 100%)...

...why the heck would I want to return energy to the grid?

I don't think my reaction is that far different from the average man in the street.

If I knew what level I was happy with the car having, I'd tell it to charge to that level and stop - not overcharge and then permit someone else to discharge it back to the level I want.

 

The problem of current electric grid is enormous dynamics of electricity consumption. During the day, load on electric grid can be several times greater than during the night, for example at 3 AM. And the problem is that power plants are not so dynamic in power production. So over the day they are struggling to deliver peak loads and over the night they are mostly wasting energy into nothing as only fraction of it gets actually consumed.

The logic of hybrid electric car giving back electricity to the grid only makes sense if you charge your car over the night therefore taking all the excessive energy from the electric grid to the car's batteries and keeping the car plugged in over day so it might return some of it back and therefore alleviate peak loads and contribute to much higher efficiency of electric grid.

So actually electric cars can have quite a lot of sense. Not just for the ability to use energy which would be wasted for driving and reducing CO2 emissions and oil consumption, but also for ability to return some of it back when demand needs it. We can look EVs / PHEVs not just as cars, but as big batteries on wheels.

 

The idea is that ideally, the power company would pay you a premium to use your stored energy so that it can avoid powering up expensive peaker plants and/or adding more big expensive base-load plants.

 

It's mine. If the power company needs storage they can damn well buy their own batteries.

If the power distribution system were nationalized it might be a different story. But private companies are not profiting from my purchase. I have no problem with sending excess home-generated power back to the grid, but not power I've already paid once to receive.

 

As I never tire of reminding people, you can also use the Prius to give return power to your own house rather than to the grid. This handily obviates the "It's mine" comment! And, the time you are likely to need the power is when the grid is down. The Prius can supply about 3kW continuously if you take power from the traction battery rather than the 12V system.

Using hybrids and other electric vehicles to exchange power with the grid is years of infrastructure away in most cases. Using the Prius for emergency power is something you can do today. See PriUPS-getting electricity FROM your hybrid vehicle for more info.

Richard

 

I think you're missing the part where you can actually make money off this venture. Nobody will be able to to just take your energy back. You would have to allow it (or in your case vehemently deny it!) and like a reverse credit card, you'd get money back each time they have to take a sip off of you. There have been mady studies done that show that allowing this V2G can pay for the lease of the entire battery in your car. So you buy the car for cheap, and the relatively expensive battery (and charging!) is free for you to use as long as you let the utility borrow some power when it is needed. You tell the system the max amount it can take, and you tell the system when you need the car to be back to full (like when you leave work).

 

I'm sure glad the state of california didn't take the "mine" approach when it came to solar power. They coughed up over $15K of the taxpayer's income to us, for our install. In turn, the surplus we feed back onto the grid is a freebie to them (though some jurisdictions actually will pay you for your surplus ... double dipping) ... the state didn't take the attitude, "buy your own PV panels". The other beauty is that PV power (or back feeding your PHEV prius power) when it's grid tied, is localized ... meaning it's WAY more efficient power, because it doesn't have feed loss from traveling 100's of miles.

Edit:

Oh, and after lookng closer at the article ... I couldn't help but think, "darell's handywork ... no doubt"






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