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Comment by aclelland | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this suggested often but I don't think I've ever seen any information about how it'd actually work in practise. Do the car companies actually want to do it, how is the car owner compensated for the battery wear and tear and who'd be in control of the management (government regulators, energy companies, car manufacturers).

Are there any examples of pilot schemes that have used cars in this way?

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It isn't the silver bullet some people say it is. Firstly, as others mentioned it really hammers the battery life. Secondly, it requires cars not being full so they can be topped up, which means less range.

Not to mention I don't think the local grid to houses can support loads of cars suddenly getting charged at once, which is what you want for big wind spikes.

You could at least program the cars to adjust their charging based upon cost - e.g. if you leave it overnight and between 2-5am electricity prices go negative it could try to charge most of the battery during this period.

Additionally you could program cars to feed into the grid when the price goes high enough to justify the cost of cycling the battery. This would help deal with unexpected events.

Yeah it's very much a niche but it's possible to buy chargers that integrate with Octopus Agile and do exactly that in the UK. Alternatively some of us are doing it with automations in apps like Home Assistant.

Nissan and Hyundai already produce cars with vehicle to grid (Nissan) and vehicle to load (Hyundai).

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