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by ben_w 1679 days ago
> The co-op that supplies my power offers a flex plan that gives you free power from 11pm-6am. You’re supposed to schedule your car to charge during that time.

One thing I’ve realised recently, is that while this is an improvement compared to the status quo, at some point we’re likely to be running houses off car batteries in these hours and charging the cars off PV during the day. By the continuum hypothesis, at some point the net average power transfer into/out of cars/any given car is going to be zero, and I wonder what that will look like economically?

1 comments

You won’t be doing that unless it’s a blackout. The amount of extra cycles that would put on your battery wouldn’t be worth it. Considering the vast majority of the cost of a EV is your battery, the cost savings just don’t add up when you add the damage to your vehicles range and worth.
I’m not sure what average domestic nighttime electrical power use currently is, but 500 watts seems plausible, and cycling 6 kWh per day of an EV’s battery doesn’t seem like it will add much wear compared to normal use, unless you have better figures to estimate from?