[ArkVark]

The missing component is the need to integrate Electric Vehicles into the grid on a fundamental basis including selling electricity.

We need a technical, regulatory and user regime to support this. For starters, by transmitting power demand/price information to cars so they can decide when to charge, and also allowing cars to deposit electricity back into the network.

If we manage this smartly, we can have battery storage and EVs in one go.

[epistasis]

Yes, exactly! A Tesla-size battery is three days' of electricity use for many people's homes.

So we will be building massive amounts of storage as we shift our car fleet to electric (though personally I hope that we can massively cut down on car use too, due to the amount of PM2.5 pollution even EVs cause. The biggest source of microplastics in CA is tire road wear, not plastic bags or straws, yet the idea of reducing car travel is faaaaaar outside the Overton window even as we try to ban single use plastics.)

I think there's lots of room for demand response, both in terms of pre-cooling houses or pre-charging batters. But I would love to be able to power my house with the 50amps that my car battery could provide. If you're only taking a couple kWh at peak times, it has nearly an effect on battery longevity and could provide great value to both the grid and user if price signals could be used in an automated fashion.

For a model that won't scale to the general population, OhmConnect in CA will pay residences to reduce usage at certain hours, averaging about 6 hours per month for me. During the recent CA high load days, I made about $50 with minimal action on my part (used all the normal lighting, etc. just didn't run the dishwasher or clothes dryer during that period).

[bananabreakfast]

Wait what? Where exactly is that pollution from EVs coming from? Seems a pretty big leap you took there.