🚀 go-pugleaf

mwgoodman@igc.apc.org (Mark W. Goodman) wrote:
>
> In article <JMC.96Jan8151038@Steam.stanford.edu>, jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU wrote:
> 
> > I think Tom Gray has confirmed my point.  The storage capacity of
> > electric cars will not add flexibility to the system, because the cars
> > must almost always be recharged at their convenience rather than at
> > the convenience of the grid operator.
> > 
> > Admittedly if your car were discharged and you weren't going to use it
> > for (say) 24 hours, you could put its charger in a mode that would
> > charge it at a time convenient for the grid.  This is unlikely to be
> > frequent enough to do much good.  If I had an electric car, I'd want
> > to recharge it right away, just in case I might have to use it.
> 
> This doesn't strike me as outlandish at all.  Where I live, you can get a
> discount on your electric bill by agreeing to let the electric utility
> turn off your central air conditioning for up to two hours at during peak
> demand.  This may not be for everyone, but it makes economic sense for the
> utility to avoid the cost of additional peak power by buying the
> flexibility to shed load at key times.
> 
> I'm sure that a similar arrangement could be established for EV chargers,
> giving drivers a discount in exchange for occasional, minor
> inconveniences.  Such arrangements should increase the economic
> attractiveness of wind as part of a utility's resource mix.

Yeah, it definitely benefits any intermittent technology like wind.
I've overstated the case somewhat, though, because the addition of
storage to the grid also makes it more possible to run baseload
plants like coal and nuclear longer and more cheaply.  That's one
of the reasons why the notion that wind is no good without storage
is something of a red herring.

Still, just having the equivalent of hundreds of MW of battery
storage out there running around under the hoods of EVs is going
to increase the flexibility of the grid.  I think it's legitimate
to argue over the degree, but that's all.

Tom Gray
Northeast Representative
American Wind Energy Association
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Tom Gray <tomgray@econet.org>