PG&E proposes using electric cars to send power back to grid to prevent blackout | Hacker News Reader

PG&E proposes using electric cars to send power back to grid to prevent blackout

abc7news.com

21 pointsImJamal38 comments

Why is this reported like PG&E came up with the idea?

> PG&E's CEO Patricia Poppe has come up with an "unconventional" idea, using electric cars to send excess power back to the grid to prevent blackouts.

This is a well understood concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

Stories rather frequently seem to exaggerate the novelty of ideas. They care more about readership than accuracy.

So not only do they want me to pay more, they want me to use my car to avoid their having to pay for infrastructure. Get bent.

The article discusses that they would pay people who integrate with Vehicle2Grid solutions. Sounds like a smart way to avoid duplicating infrastructure.

People who know they don’t need their full battery charge except for rare, long trips can sell it back to the grid.

As long as it’s optional I’m fine with it. I don’t want to add cycles to my battery if I don’t have to.

The last time I looked into this the primary source of capacity degradation in EVs is from aging, not cycling. Most users could probably cycle their battery 50% more for a minuscule loss of overall lifetime/utility.

Do you have a source? That is really interesting if so! I'll plug my car in more often then.

I remember seeing Elon Musk say that our Model 3 was rated for 1500 recharge cycles. Our warranty is for 70% capacity after 8 years or 120k miles. That hints to me that cycling is the main cause of degradation.

https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty

Cycle count is the issue, not age. Think about laptops that are heavily used on battery vs not. There are taxis that have more degradation from fast charging and massive cycle counts than cars that are many years older.

From what I remember, a li-ion cycle means a full range charge and discharge. Charging 10 percent is just 10 percent of a cycle. And discharging at low charge state causes more wear. Also fully charging is worse than just going to 70 percent charge. So ideally you hover around the middle with small cycles.

Whether this is all true for Tesla's batteries I don't know. But I would assume that they do count a partial charge as a partial cycle and you shouldn't be penalized for intermittent charging.

I'd certainly try to stay above 30 percent charge as much as possible. And use slow charging, because that's less wear too. So plugging it in every night at home should be less wear than the eventual quick charge from low. Even if the warranty doesn't distinguish these nuances, it's probably easier to manage regular home charging with better results too.

If you do the math on that cycle count, you'll see its several times the warrantied amount. 1500 charges at 80% for a standard range M3 is over 300k miles. I think they probably picked that value to align with norms of other warranties rather than reflect any kind of real risk. They released some charts as part of their impact report showing 12% degradation at 200k miles, which lines up pretty well w/ the 1500 charges. [1] Most people drive about 10k miles/year, which would maybe be 50 cycles/year, and obviously the batter is unlikely to last 30 years.

[1] https://electrek.co/2023/04/25/tesla-update-battery-degradat...

I assume it would be the same as when people install solar panels and feed excess power back into the grid. Many power companies do pay people for the excess power and you can in effect be a producer for your electric company and not a consumer.

Unfortunately not all of them do that. Austin Energy for example charges you the normal rate for all electricity you use even if you generate it with your own solar, and then monitors how much you generated and pays for that at a lower rate in the form of credits. So if you generate enough extra power you can end up with a $0 bill and reduce your next bill. But if you generate more than you use every month you'll never get any monetary return, and of course the rates can vary.

I wonder how use of an EV would degrade the battery capacity - which is what really wears out a car, a proxy for miles on an ice car or hours of use on a generatoir.

How many equivalent miles would be put on the car by draining the battery to the grid?

I just hope this furthers V2L adoption, unfortunately due to the wait times for an Ioniq 5, I had to settle for a Tesla.

Frustrates me so much that I drive a massive power bank on wheels, but have no way to get that power back out of the car.

I mainly desire it for home backup, and potentially charging another EV, as far as the grid goes I think this is just another attempt by PG&E to avoid investing in their own infrastructure at the expense of people's car's charge cycles.

I just hope this furthers V2L adoption

I would argue that would furthers more V2L adoption is more blackouts. It's one of the reasons I'm selling our Honda generator: have a Hyundai Ioniq 5, what do I need a 2000W generator for? What did I ever need the Honda for? Blackouts.

Ironically due to being unable to get the Ioniq 5 and ending up with the Tesla, I'm now in the market for a generator. If it's the quiet model and you live in western Canada, I'd be interested.

The Tesla even voids your warranty if you try and use a inverter from the cigarette lighter, such BS. I'm now worse off in emergencies than I was with my old gas car.

So far I've had to buy one of those AC camping batteries to keep the internet on, as during outages everyone's phones simultaneously switch to LTE/4G making it unusably slow.

I'm still buying a gas generator for heating, as my home heating is natural gas so I technically only need to power the fan/thermostat.

This proposal would work well with solar PV panel-covered parking lots.

What they should propose is a 10 year fixed rate that PG&E will buy the power back for... to secure investment in the technology.

How about no? They don’t want private ownership of power grids or microgrids — unless it’s for their exclusive benefit.

Californians get annoyed we pay 50% more for gasoline usually.

Most don't know we pay 500% more for electricity than many states.

I have started telling everyone I know this fact. Almost no one knows it. Almost no one has anything to stay other than shake their head in silence.

Maybe they don't have anything to say because they know it's not true and don't want to argue with you?

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

California's average electricity rate is 2.4x that of the cheapest state. So it is not 500% more than any state, let alone many states.

Those numbers seem totally off to me.

I have a municipal utility company, so they don't have to worry about profit or anything like that. The lowest possible residential rate, for people who use a minimal amount of electricity at the cheapest times, is $0.2106/kWh. And that's before amortizing the daily "power access fee". Most people will be in the middle or top tier, where the marginal price can exceed $0.40/kWh.

For PG&E, it looks like electricity starts at $0.38/kWh after taxes and goes up to $0.48/kWh for heavy users[1]

For SoCal Edison, the cheapest tier is $0.36/kWh and goes up to $0.46/kWh for heavy users.

Unless there's some secret to getting cheap electricity, or the numbers in your link don't include state taxes/fees, it seems impossible to me that the average residential kilowatt-hour of electricity only costs $0.19.

Edit: FWIW, the BLS CPI calculations[3] say that rates in California metros range from $0.274-$0.475. They don't publish a CA average, but the "Pacific" regional average of $0.228/kWh is still above the $0.196/kWh figure, even after being brought down by states like Washington where electricity is ~75% cheaper than places like San Diego

[1]: https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...

[2]: https://www.sce.com/residential/rates/Standard-Residential-R...

[3]: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...

This is an interesting point. The link (nor the GP) doesn't claim it's "residential" though, just "retail". Perhaps commercial rates significantly lower it? If you have better data, I'd love to see if it affects the substance of the GPs post.

Oh, that makes sense. My understanding is that industrial users of electricity can get some hefty discounts. Unfortunately that isn't helpful for the average person or when comparing cost of living between two regions.

For PG&E it appears they have an EV specific rate plan that is cheaper. It says it is $0.27/kWh for off peak charging.

https://www.pge.com/pge_global/local/images/data/en-us/rate-...

I can't link directly to the tab but its the second tab on this page: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...

If you're lucky enough to live in Alameda, it has its own municipal power. Their EV rates are significantly cheaper at $0.15/kWh https://www.alamedamp.com/393/TOU-Time-of-Use-Rate-for-EV-Ow...

yes but during the day the ev plan is 58c/kwh

I think offpeak EV charging is a relatively small fraction of overall electricity consumption.

Sorry this article was EV specific but I see now the OP meant electricity costs in general

I feel like that table is at the wrong scale/isn't super useful (though the GPs scale is the same). For example with WA it lists the price as .0875, but for the majority (population) of the state it's ~.10/.11, and then for the rest (mostly eastern wa) it's like .04.

I'm guessing if the GP did have a source it'd be "this specific county in CA is 5x more than these sets of counties that sell electricity to other counties to subsidize their users"

I know several out of state friends paying $0.08

I read up on EV forums and solar forums. Ive seen people paying $0.06

I'm paying $0.38+ in California

Sure I use a bit of hyperbole in my stat... But it's still outrageous, and armchair 3 second googling isn't going to convince me.

And now, the people I talk to agree with the general sentiment they just can't believe how screwed were all getting and how basically there is nothing we can do about it.

Usually the conversation quickly turns to moving out of California soon.

I’ll take a source with some published methodology over anecdotes any day.

But for an anecdote, I pay $0.18/kWh for off-peak electricity in the middle of Los Angeles. Peak is $0.27. I also have 1:1 net metering so they’ll buy excess solar and battery at the same rate.

Nice, I'll add "only 300% more than some states when off peak in LA" to my data.

At least that's true!

Here are my rates in Minnesota: https://www.kpcoop.com/rates-0

This is exactly what's wrong with modern people. You'll believe some generalized 'study' instead of common sense data.

"Common sense" is just your own personal bias. This is why we have science!

Science is just a published bias by whoever paid the 'scientist'. (These days)

That is false. They juggle the numbers and hide all kinds of surcharges.

There are tiered plans and time-of-use plans that make it almost impossible to get the rates other states have 24/7.

for example, an electric vehicle plan that discounts electricity to 27c/kwh at night for charging, makes you pay 58c/kwh during the day.

Basically they outlaw air conditioning (and any kind of daytime appliance use).

The upside to this is that it lets people install solar + batteries and make themselves independent of the utility.

I expect the long game is to bow out of residential electricity (which has more expensive infrastructure), get some sort of "minimum payment" plan in place to cover it anyhow, and collect ruinous rates from city dwellers with no solar ability and where infrastructure per household is efficiently deployed.

Prove it

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