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by mepiethree 1765 days ago
I’m not sure what country you live in, so this may not apply to you, but most countries, including mine (USA) do heavily incentivize the use of green energy. Globally, renewable energy growth is accelerating, now that costs have come down so far. It’s both/and, not either/or.

One other thing is that EVs have huge potential for energy storage. Smart energy policy will effectively use EVs as both a source and sink. In the daytime, when solar is dominant, EVs can charge at work. At night, they can discharge and power your home (V2G). There aren’t many EVs that do this currently (there aren’t many EVs at all currently), but many, like the F150 Electric, will.
1 comments
sleavey 1765 days ago
I actually published a paper on your last point many years ago. To me it's obvious that we need to use electric car batteries as storage for the grid. The infrastructure is already there. The software in the car should allow the user to specify their preference for how full to keep the battery at all times, and when they next plan to drive far, and the car can decide how it gets its battery charge to the required level in the available time. Adding in price incentives to use electricity when it's cheapest (when there's most supply vs demand) makes it even more attractive.
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mepiethree 1765 days ago
Nice! Would love to read your paper :) I worked on this project, which is why I am all over this comment section :)

https://its.berkeley.edu/news/new-tsrc-report-shows-benefits...

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sleavey 1765 days ago
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6609120

We were a bunch of physicists having fun. The impact of using just laptops for demand side response will be negligible but the idea is that all battery equipped, mains connected devices are capable of responding to grid supply/demand changes by adding or removing load only needing simple electronics (we used an Arduino Uno).

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zimpenfish 1765 days ago
> To me it's obvious that we need to use electric car batteries as storage for the grid.

Like a Powerwall for your solar panels but using the car instead of the battery? That'd make good sense for places like the UK where there's currently no Powerwall equivalent (that I know of.)

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mepiethree 1765 days ago
Yep! Sunrun (largest residential solar company in the US) has partnered with Ford to make their new electric pickups into “power walls” in this way
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