[jluxenberg]

Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then recharge during the day when the sun comes out.

If you have a large home or need to always have a fully charged car, spend $15k on a home battery.

We need to get out of this mindset that electric utilities will provide unlimited power at a fixed price. With some investment from individual homeowners we can reduce peak to average ratios for utilities and make it much cheaper and possible to use intermittent green energy sources like wind and solar.

[fooker]

> then recharge during the day when the sun comes out.

Unless you actually need the car during the day..

[Ma8ee]

Then you get a separate battery. But the vast majority only drives their car back and forth to work, so most of the day the cars are just standing there and could be charged.

[Valgrim]

Then you buy a home battery, as he said?

[Robotbeat]

The real idea is not using cars for storage but end of life car batteries AND simply using the same factories that make car batteries to make grid batteries. AND, since vehicles will be a significant source of our electricity demand, we can use them as "storage" simply by not charging them at some times.

I think most people don't realize that V2G tech is old (Chademo supported it, and older Leafs can already do it natively, and they're about a decade old), but it's expensive. You basically need a DC charger for every car that will be doing V2G. Look up how much a DC charger is, and you can get something like a dedicated Powerwall for the same price...

[nicoburns]

I think using the car batteries as storage also makes a lot of sense. Suppose technology improves so that cars have ~double the capacity they have now (~150kwh), then that’s super useful for long car journeys, but most people only do short journeys each day. So you could use the excess for storage. And they’d be plenty considering the average household in the uk only uses 10kwh a day (although admittedly that’s factoring in gas heating which will need to be replaced)

[toomuchtodo]

Hence why Tesla sells Powerwalls instead of supporting V2G. There are also subsidies for Powerwalls from a variety of entities, and they can be orchestrated in concert to create a virtual power plant. V2G for anything other than emergency power is unnecessary complexity.

[kwhitefoot]

> We need to get out of this mindset that electric utilities will provide unlimited power at a fixed price.

We already pay spot price here in Norway.

[DavidPeiffer]

How much variability do you see in spot prices? Are there any alternatives?

It looks like 90%+ of electricity produced in Norway is hydro, with fossil fuels only around 2% [1]. Hydroelectric plants are very quick to respond to changes in demand.

From what I can see, it probably isn't a huge surprise bill risk to the consumer compared to places like, say, Texas.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway

[reaperducer]

And large parts of Texas.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

>Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then recharge during the day when the sun comes out.

Too bad you'll be driving to the office on business days.

[Dylan16807]

When the issue is "how do we generate enough power" it doesn't really matter where the car is.

That just complicates distribution a little, but not a whole lot.

[cozzyd]

Not all of us have a garage or a car for that matter (nor a place to put a large battery).

[mikepurvis]

Those for whom that is the case probably live in a dense urban core which is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of detached single family homes for whom it is not.

In any case, it's not hard to imagine that XX kWh onsite battery reserves will end up as a standard condo feature in the future same as hot water or a weight room.

[tamaharbor]

How often will I need to replace my battery set?

[ac29]

Tesla Powerwall has a 10 year warranty. If thats based on actual expected life and not just a marketing thing, its not too unreasonable.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage.

That's a solution I hope that neither I nor my children live to see. It's a solution I hope never happens unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries in order to get our hands on rare resources. Lithium battery tech is quite miraculous, but it's also not appropriate as the basis for the entire electrification of human civilization.

Also, lots of people will have neither cars nor garages.

[Anchor]

> unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries

It is already here. Google LFP batteries.

[hutzlibu]

Erm, have you heard of

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery

No technical recolution needed, no rare elements needed, no invasions nedded, just plain salt, iron and copper. They are just bigger in size.

And for some reasons not really known so this whole discussion feels a bit off.