Is this a look into the future?

JBee

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Oh, oh oh... me, me, me!! Can I say something too, I like this subject! 🙂

We can also talk about grid defection, spinning reserve, grid obsolescence and generally about making a distributed decentralised sustainable democratised power system.

I'll post something tonight.
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rr6013

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I'll post something tonight.
While you’re at it, consider this gridbit…
A recent analysis by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that at the end of 2020, projects offering 680 gigawatts’ worth of carbon-free power — equal to more than half of the total installed electric generating capacity in the U.S. today — were waiting in “interconnection queues” to get access to the grid. These queues are stalled due to the need for power line upgrades and disagreements over who should pay for those upgrades, according to the advocacy group Americans for a Clean Energy Grid. Special high-voltage power lines that can carry renewable energy from the more rural areas where it’s generated to population centers are also needed, but those can take up to 10 years to build.
 

Crissa

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That's one of the reasons why distributed generation and infill generation is better.

Until we have solar panels on every parking lot we shouldn't be giving the best parts of the desert valleys to these solar farms that want to do scrap and stack.

Solar can even sit over crops and grazing to no detriment to the crops or grazing because, like the solar cells themselves, there is a peak amount of sun said plants can absorb in a day.

-Crissa
 

Crissa

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No Way
Tesla VPP pilot program in California where Powerwall owners would join in voluntarily without compensation to let the VPP pull power from their battery packs when the grid needed it.
So
Power company cycle and ripping off your powerwall life and maybe your Tesla battery life.

Bad really really bad
Charge cycling a Battery degrades batteries
Now If
Power companies will pay for battery charge discharge and all lost power.

but
This scam is like leting your next door neibor use your Tesla or Powerwall.
Just Say No
Incorrect.

They were paid $2 per kilowatt that was consumed by the grid.
https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/tesla-virtual-power-plant-SCE-2022

-Crissa
 

tidmutt

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I don't think the impact to the vehicle battery is as big as some people think it will be. When the volume of grid connected EV's increase, the amount of draw for them will be minimized and by a huge amount. This is obviously are dependent as some areas typically see no more than a 5-10 hours of power outage per year on average in the US.

While one would believe that home batteries are the better choice, per KWh of storage they are vastly more expensive currently and most use the exact same chemistry as EV batteries. Truth be told, it would be cheaper to replace an EV battery than a power wall on a per KWh basis. I image in the future, folks will have a grave yard of worn out EV with intact batteries parked behind their homes as power storage. LOL
Yes, this... When there are a 100 million EVs connected to the grid, how many cycles will each one need to sacrifice to the grid? What if a good percentage of those EVs are LFP batteries with triple the cycle life? What is the cycle life of 4680s? If a battery pack has a 3000 cycle life, giving up 10% of those seems pretty trivial versus having to produce additional batteries.

Not using vehicle to grid seems like a waste opportunity IMO... although I know there is some fairly complex/expensive equipment needed in to protect the local grid from being energized by the vehicle batteries during line work etc, surely that could be addressed when you start to look at these kind of scales.
 


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https://www.yahoo.com/news/duke-wants-f-150-lightning-141935418.html

Duke wants to use some F-150 Lightning batteries. And it’ll pay part of the lease.

When energy demand in North Carolina spikes, Duke could turn to your electric-powered pickup truck to keep it from turning to more traditional power sources.

Duke is asking the N.C. Utilities Commission to approve a pilot program in which it would pay a small part of the monthly lease for Ford F-150 Lightning drivers in return for being able to draw power from the vehicles’ batteries at times of very high energy demand.

Importantly for Duke, the F-150 Lightning has a battery that can supply energy back to the grid in addition to pulling energy from it. Company executives hope that this means the trucks can effectively act as miniature moving power plants that can eventually help Duke avoid turning its coal-fired plants on at times when it needs to provide the most energy, like winter mornings or late afternoons in the summer.

The pilot program is important because it will help Duke understand how and when customers are willing to have their electric vehicle batteries used for the grid; how Duke’s using the power will affect the batteries; and how much the utility can depend on the batteries for energy when demand is high.

“This is part of our strategy on how we’re going to manage the grid and use customer resources to help our grid out,” said Harry Sideris, Duke Energy’s executive vice president of customer experience, solutions and service.

The F-150 Lightning is the much-anticipated electric-powered version of the Ford F-150 pickup truck. Demand for the electric vehicle quickly outpaced Ford’s capacity to actually build the trucks, with Ford Authority reporting that some 2022 orders were pushed into the 2023 model year.

In a written statement, Stephen Croley, Ford Motor Company’s chief policy officer and general counsel, said, “Ford’s electric vehicles are unlocking new possibilities in energy management for our customers, becoming valuable energy storage sources that are changing the game on the benefits an EV can deliver.”

Duke expects to spend about $500,000 on the pilot, which will be available to up to 100 customers in the Duke Energy Carolinas service area. That area encompasses Charlotte, Greensboro and parts of Durham.

The utility company hopes to launch the pilot in early 2023 and initially expects the F-150 Lightning to be the only eligible vehicle. Customers participating in the program will need to own their homes and install the Ford Charge Station Pro charger, as well as Ford’s Intelligent Backup Power Home Integration System.

Duke will draw from the F-150 Lightning batteries as many as three times in each of the months from December to February and again from June to August. The company will be able to pull power from the pick-up trucks one time in each of the other six months of the year.

The day before Duke plans to use the batteries, Sideris said, it will contact customers.

Duke has not yet decided how much of a battery’s charge it will take during a peak period.

“The idea is to make it as least impactful as we can on the customers, and usually on these types of programs we need them for an hour or two,” Sideris said.

Customers who participate in the pilot will be able to opt out of having Duke draw upon their batteries as many as two times per summer or winter before their participation in the program could be jeopardized.

“We can’t have it completely unreliable in terms of being able to call on it,” Sideris said. “The pilot is only with 100 folks, so it’s small, but as this scales, not everybody is going to be where they need to be every time nor be able to discharge every time.”

Using the information gleaned from the pilot, Duke hopes to launch a full-scale program offering incentives for customers whose electric vehicles have so-called bidirectional batteries. That could be possible after two years of the pilot program, Duke said in its filing.

Duke included customer-oriented and energy efficiency programs like the one it is proposing with Ford in its carbon dioxide reduction plan filed earlier this year.

In each of the four energy generation portfolios, Duke is proposing a mixture of 4.2 gigawatts of consumer-generated power or energy saved annually by 2035. That’s the equivalent of more than three Sharon Harris Nuclear Plants.

Sideris said, “These type of programs really are what we’re talking about there: Being able to utilize a large battery a couple of times a month to be able to balance load, shift load around to not have to use other resources that may not be as clean or may not be available at that time.”
 

ldjessee

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I think by the time we are ready to sell or trade in our 2017 Nissan Leaf, I am hoping to use it as a battery backup. It is already made, I have already paid it off, and even if it was at a very low percentage (say 70%), it still would be cheaper than buying a power wall and cost less, even if have to go out and buy additional cables/electronics, etc.
My next home will be built with solar panels on it, have a disconnect switch, have battery storage, and if offered, VPP.

I have already benefited from Duke energies programs in the past (got a discount of $10k off my Nissan Leaf thanks to them). It worked out well from my point of view, and I think Duke might eventually make that back... but thanks to the pandemic, not as soon as they probably planned.

As since many IT and other jobs are work from home, I suspect my long or often commutes are going to be few and far between.

So my cars sit more at home than they do at work, during the day.

And if I was an employer, I would build a solar parking cover, provide power to EVs (maybe at cost, or just a penny or two more), but also buy some batteries and reduce my demand charges from the electrical company.

Robert Llewellyn on Fully Charged did at least one, if not two, videos about grid storage and time shifting loads and such. One of them he actually visits the power plant, talks to an engineer, and if I am remembering correctly, says they are so good at predicting the power use, it would make it easy to have the storage setup for peak demands (like charging when the grid has so much excess they are paying people to take it then discharging during high demands when the rate is really high).

I thought (before the used car market went crazy and Leaf prices were dropping down to nearly $5k) of buying several used Leafs and then using them for battery storage and setting up power time shift in some kind of deal where time of use is a big deal and make money from charging when cheap and providing power when expensive. Sure, not going to make you a millionaire, but I thought it could offset some things, and would have a lot of storage capacity. So I definitely agree the EV equivalent of having a car in the front yard on blocks will be having the EV near the service panel or someplace with a feed connection just to act as a battery backup and VPP. ;)
 

rr6013

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So I definitely agree the EV equivalent of having a car in the front yard on blocks
EV batteries, like RtR, sprout can-do markets populated by skilled, inventive and plain folk whose ingenuity can work perfectly good into better. V2G isn’t junkyards redux post-Ladybird, but Duke does incentivate EV’s on blocks.
Duke needs to option the program into powerwalls versus raw payouts!
 

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I'm all for repurpose/reuse and DIYers, but mismanaged battery packs are an extreme hazard.




This thermal runaway event was caused by a knowledgeable person cutting 1 too many corners, and they barely averted disaster.
 

ldjessee

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Yeah, I put that right up there with car fires, those who try welding gas tanks, propane tanks, or other things.
 


cvalue13

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Pay a “small part of lease” is bizarre, unless someone is misspeaking/reporting.

Needing a head examination would be anyone that leases an F150L and elects to also pay the $10K-$15K in sunk costs for the home-bolted equipment and installation of the Home Integration System.
 

JBee

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"Part 1 - Network Dynamics"

(Sorry for the long post and posting it delayed. I actually wrote most of this a while back and saved it as a draft to the thread, but then it disappeared, until I found it on a open tab on my phone and could retrieve it!)

I'm not even 100% sure that VPP is the solution we need, but it might form a part of the solution for industry and large consumers along the way to a much more embedded generation grid.

Lets start with the basics, to simplify and make arguments around the various issues that the grid already faces from various causes.

Until now the basic network structure consists of the following components:
  1. Energy Generator - this can be anything from Solar, wind, hydro, biomass to coal, natural gas and Nuclear
  2. Transmission System - high capacity lines that carry large amounts of energy over long distances (these are mostly AC but can also be HV DC)
  3. Distribution systems - these a lower power, and typically lower voltage lines that run to consumers
  4. Consumers - Customers that use the energy, being households, commercial or industry
In this structure you can already see that the optimization is to produce energy centrally in one location with large scale generation (especially with fossils/nuclear/hydro/wind which is more cost effective and efficient than small generation) and then transmit and distribute that power to consumers. The point is that although power can flow in both directions through a cable, the original network system design was never intended for small embedded generation, and that all consumers were billed and supplied from the top down, not the bottom up in the list.

Now with the advent of embedded household solar generation, where household produce a substantial amount of energy themselves, a few things happen on the grid that are not favorable for the system to operate efficiently and cost effectively.

  1. Grid defection - This occurs when the consumer starts producing power for their own consumption or in general reduces consumption from the grid (just buying a new fridge can do that btw). So if you install solar, the first thing that normally happens is that you use your own solar power instead of the grid, after all you installed solar to save money. You essentially "defect from the grid" with your load, in that you make your own power and use less from the grid. The network and consumers on the network have a series of problems to deal with to allow this to happen:

    a. the network provider normally gets paid per unit of energy they transport over their network, if the consumer uses their own energy from solar, they don't get paid as much. But they still have to operate a functional network to provide to the customer when the sun goes down at night or doesn't shine. But at night they don't sell as much power either. So in order to maintain the network, they need to increase the network fees, which in turn increases consumer service fees from the retailer to the consumer. It's really lose, lose for everyone involved, generators, networks and solar powered households.

    b. This has the side effect that it leads households to either install more solar or even completely disconnect from the network as to avoid network fees that increase the kWh price, and that only give you the "ability" to consume power when the sun doesn't shine, but doesn't pay for actual energy.

    The net result of these is a system recursive death spiral, where every price increase on the network side provokes even more people defecting with their energy load to another source. It also means that there is no financial incentive to providers to supply power over the network, as there is no guaranteed return on capital to make the investment to either improve, or at times, even maintain the grid.

    I mean who would install power cables to customers that DON'T really want to buy any energy from you and could buy solar instead? Let alone to pay maintenance for cables that don't actually provide much energy volume.

    To be clear this is not regulatory capture, this is network economics, some parts of the grid are viable, IF they can transport energy at a low enough cost to the consumer. But in many non-urban locations, the network cost can exceed the cost of generation, making supplying to some areas cost prohibitive, and requiring the network to subsidize costs from profitable areas or other means, which in turn makes them more cost sensitive as well. This makes embedded generation like solar more favorable, but we have other issues still to resolve:

  2. Spinning Reserve - This is a bit technical, but the overarching principle is simply that generators must always produce just enough power on the network to supply the current network load from the consumers within seconds. If the generators produce to much power the voltage goes up, not enough and the voltage goes down, either of which could trip the safety devices that stop any extremes from occurring and damaging network, generator and consumer equipment.

    Example 1: Imagine the network as a water tank, the generators as pumps putting water into the tank, and consumers letting water out of the tank. Now think of the consequences of having a tank (network) that is only as high as a piece of paper is thin, and pumps need to run exactly as fast as the water running out. That is effectively your network voltage range.

    Now spinning reserve is essentially the amount of generation that is currently running, but is not operating at full load, just in case a consumer turns on a load, so they can throttle up and provide the power to them in near real time. (Imagine the system above with water pumps running but throttled with a valve so less water flows). It's a finely balanced operation that needs to operate within the confines of the settings of the network and home safety switchgear, and react within a split second.

    Example 2: imagine the tank network above running a solar powered pump, that varies the amount of water it pumps (generates) into the tank (network) according to how much sunlight there is, or how cloudy. Sometimes there is enough capacity in the network tank to run the customer loads, sometimes there isn't, and nobody can tell the sun when to shine and produce more. That means that all the other pumps on the network have to follow what the solar (or wind) pump is doing, and they produce less when the solar is on, and more when the solar is off. If they don't then the paper high tank will either overflow and trip the high voltage settings, or run out of power and trip the low voltage settings. Now consider that weather events can be large and change in whole regions and cities within a few minutes, and that spinning reserve has to be instantly available to take up network load to maintain the network voltage and consumers having a brownout.

    The normal answer to this "renewable variability" is to operate more spinning reserve, that comes from a reliable source, the more renewable energy is connected to the network. Adding spinning reserve costs money to operate and install, and this is the primary reason to have grid storage (battery/pumped hydro), to smooth out the peak variations in load and renewable generation. Without it you can easily get an unstable network and rolling blackouts.

    Example 3: Now consider the network as a "water tank" analogy above in examples, but this time with intermittent renewable generators, being like random pop up sprinklers placed randomly around the tank, all pumping into the tank whenever they want, without the main pumps having any say when they can sprinkle into the tank (network) or not, and when they do sprinkle in, they have to reduce the main pumps by as much as all the sprinklers combined as to not over fill the paper thin tank.

    This is network balancing 1 on 1 and is also the main interest to use VPP and V2G as a tertiary embedded spinning reserve mechanism.

    This does not necessarily have to consume much energy, (the tank is not high) but it does have to have enough power and speed to react to network changes in real time, and can be used short term (10-20minutes) to buffer the network until alternative generation capacity can be started and take up load. Imagine lots of little network embedded "water tanks" batteries that help to level out the big network instead of other fossil pumps.

    This is not the same thing as buying energy off-peak and selling it hours later on-peak for a profit. Typically, in many "developed network markets" this capacity network stabilisation is paid for in capacity credits. Not all markets have this feature though, meaning spinning reserve is not profitable to operate by itself, as much as it is simply required to keep the network stable enough export power at all, meaning there is much greater range in kWh price fluctuations as retailers scramble to get enough power to keep the network running.

    Even a small bit of realtime storage capacity can go a long way here to fix this, provided the network itself has enough capacity to transport it from where it is to where its needed.

  3. Solar Export - Network Curtailment
    There's another way that network often use to get rid of the pesky embedded household generation and that is by setting the voltage levels on their distribution network transformers to a higher voltage. Seeing that solar inverters have a fixed voltage range, where they are allowed to export power to the grid, this results in the solar inverter thinking the network tank is "full" and therefore limits how much power it exports to the grid, even though it could produce more from available solar. Most inverters do not even indicate this, because it would have to measure solar insolation separately from the MPPT regulated solar input for the PV panels to do so.

    The net effect of these settings being manipulated is that the network is essentially turning off the tap so that solar systems can't feed power much into the network, and by doing so end up with a system which is much easier for them to control, because it is more stable and doesn't vary with RE inputs as much.
This is essentially a primer into network dynamics so we can better understand how to incorporate storage into the power systems we use today.

If anyone's interested I'll follow up with Part 2, which will be about how relevant the network structure is in the age of affordable batteries.
 

ldjessee

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That is a lot of information.

But many of those points seem to be... not exaggerated, but stated in a way that makes the grid operator and power producer seem like some poor, taken advantage of company that has no choice but to not adjust with the times and changes and to be forced by customers and regulation to adjust to the new realities of power generation.

Everyone has to adjust when technologies change. I cannot think of a single industry that has not had to change in the last 100 years.

If I had been a grid operator, I would have offered panels and batteries on lease/rent to my customers. It lowers my costs, because I can keep the grid smaller, it lowers my costs for paying for expensive power generation projects as much and/or as often.
And if I, the grid operator, own the solar panels and batteries, then if I need to use them for peak shaving, etc... they are mine to do that with. They could have embraced this and taken advantage of their position and relationship they already had with the customer.

(If my power company offered an upgrade/installation of solar, battery, and EV charger... and it was not too outrageous, I would probably go for it, as then they could not complain and it would be in their best interest to get it done as quickly as possible.)

Also, battery and spinning mass are the fastest reacting for peak power loads. Much faster than ramping up a gas peaker plant, pump hydro, etc.

Residential PV solar panels has been around for decades. I remember a house having them added in the late 80s. Sure they were much lower efficiency, but even the longest lived panels would probably need by now, so would be able to take advantage of newer, more efficient panels, micro-inverters, and adding battery storage.
 

JBee

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That is a lot of information.

But many of those points seem to be... not exaggerated, but stated in a way that makes the grid operator and power producer seem like some poor, taken advantage of company that has no choice but to not adjust with the times and changes and to be forced by customers and regulation to adjust to the new realities of power generation.

Everyone has to adjust when technologies change. I cannot think of a single industry that has not had to change in the last 100 years.

If I had been a grid operator, I would have offered panels and batteries on lease/rent to my customers. It lowers my costs, because I can keep the grid smaller, it lowers my costs for paying for expensive power generation projects as much and/or as often.
And if I, the grid operator, own the solar panels and batteries, then if I need to use them for peak shaving, etc... they are mine to do that with. They could have embraced this and taken advantage of their position and relationship they already had with the customer.

(If my power company offered an upgrade/installation of solar, battery, and EV charger... and it was not too outrageous, I would probably go for it, as then they could not complain and it would be in their best interest to get it done as quickly as possible.)

Also, battery and spinning mass are the fastest reacting for peak power loads. Much faster than ramping up a gas peaker plant, pump hydro, etc.

Residential PV solar panels has been around for decades. I remember a house having them added in the late 80s. Sure they were much lower efficiency, but even the longest lived panels would probably need by now, so would be able to take advantage of newer, more efficient panels, micro-inverters, and adding battery storage.
I agree that industry needs to change, no doubt. The question is how.

So in the context of the above, it also depends on how your electricity market is setup. Here in Australia, as is also the case in the USA since 1992, the electricity system consists of generation, transmission and distribution, on top of which sits a tertiary layer of retailers, that sell those products and services to the customer. Like with broadband internet connections, the retailer does not necessarily have to own the network in order to provide power over it, so in many cases the network provider is also not the retailer. Generators are also often not affiliated with either and most energy is through the real time market mechanism or via bilateral contacts.

For example: Essentially network providers are just a "energy transportation company", doing their job on lines (roads) that only have a certain capacity to transport power. They charge the retailers (like ebay stores) to transport the power (ebay products) over there dedicated infrastructure. But in order to do that they need to maintain the road so that transport can occur at all ie network traffic management.

But regardless of what it sounds like, the problem still remains even if the generator/network provider/retailer offers households solar systems and inverters, and even batteries. Who offers them is not the problem, because the technicalities of system balancing remain the same.

One of the only ways to make that idea work would be that the household continues to pay the retailer and network provider for the power, that the household is making from its own roof solar. That way the provider could limit solar impacts through self regulation, but doing so means they still have to buy spinning reserve from other generators to compensate for weather events. And it doesn't necessarily reduce network size, if the peak load itself is not reduced by doing so.

We also need to allow for the system to grow to support EV. According to EM the network has to treble in size to support 100% EV. So there are compounding problems that do not always happen at the same time, being; embedded solar producing high peak exports in grids that don't use it, and high peak loads for EV charging and households when the sun doesn't shine. The level of battery production could not meet that demand in the short to medium term even if they wanted to, or had the money to do it.

This is also a tricky selling point for households who are looking to reduce their power bill, and prefer running their households by investing in solar themselves, to reap the benefits. It's also a tricky path for retailers/network providers to navigate if households are allowed to choose providers at random, and the house changes owners, or renter, with the networks solar remaining on the roof. BTW We have solar installers that do this here already but who are not affiliated with the retailer/network provider at all. They go to people without solar, that can only afford payment installments, and sell them a solar system they "pay off" by buying energy from the installer instead, at a fixed rate over numerous years, with the promise that in 7-10years from now their power will be mostly free. The installer then installs a solar system on their roof for a premium, and reaps the benefit between what they paid in capex for the solar installation and a reduced negotiated bulk tariff they negotiate with the energy retailer, who by the way is not the network provider. Because the cost is spread out in installments, and on paper doesn't look like much more than the existing power bill from the retailer, lots of people sign up to what I would call "a scam", in comparison to just financing it, seeing solar can have payback periods down to 3-4years if done right. Off grid less than 1 year if you avoid network connection costs all together.

As always with networks, this is a time of use issue. One thing I think V2X/V2G can solve because it utilizes existing EV storage better, rather than introducing more household storage, has much greater capacity that can physically follow load to different parts of the network (think plugging your EV in at work were you need the power during the day) and comes at little to no extra cost than the vehicle purchase price, you already pay for to get an EV.

The "load following" part is actually a critical benefit to the whole V2X system. If you boil down your car usage pattern, the EV uses energy from storage to take you to where you want to be, if where you want to be is at your home or work, you can use the EV to provide power directly there where you need it too, with absolutely no network at all if you want.

Wherever you are you have energy to do things you want. That essentially covers the user load in all situations, by providing access to mobile energy storage that follows the consumer around.

The next critical component is how to best integrate energy generation into the EV V2X system. That is once again a scheduling problem and the solutions need not be in the electrical system itself, as I will try to demonstrate in my next post. :)
 
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ldjessee

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It must be nice to have competition, but I got one choice for gas, once choice for electricity, one choice for water, and 2 options for Internet.

And of those two Internet choices, when one changed to a different second choice it took 1 to 2 years before that changed completed...

Cannot imagine how long it would take to add or switch offerings by power companies with the way the infrastructure is setup here.

Now, once homes all have smart meters I assume it would be much easier.
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