[onlyrealcuzzo]

> If off-grid is competitive, selling at peak prices is a no brainer.

So why isn't the utility managing the storage directly then? Aren't they best suited to do this???

Or is this article just saying that EV car batteries could?

[Dylan16807]

> Aren't they best suited to do this???

They don't have a million EV batteries, purchased outside the scope of this program, sitting around idle and connected to the grid.

Their customers do.

[tuatoru]

Utilities don't yet have a million EV batteries laying around, but they (or specialist EoL battery companies) will soon.

From the abstract:-

> Participation rates fall below 10% if half of EV batteries at end-of-vehicle-life are used as stationary storage.

Half seems conservative to me. There are already lots of startups wanting your end-of-life EV battery.

[aurelwu]

end-of-life Battery usage will compete with recycling them and especially as material needed per kWh is going to keep going down it might be more economical to recycle them into a new battery - it also depends on costs of raw materials. I'd expect the share to be neither 0:100 nor 100:0 and to fluctuate quite a bit

[Dylan16807]

It makes sense to move a lot of load to older stationary batteries as those become more plentiful.

But more capacity is better, and getting things online sooner is better. And in 2030 almost all the capacity is going to be in non-retired packs in their original cars.

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

Utilities buy most of their power at wholesale rates, which are lower than the consumer rate they charge the end user. Net metering rules in some jurisdictions obligate the utilities to buy solar/battery power from users at consumer rates. That can be a good financial opportunity for homeowners and it’s driven a lot of the investment in home solar setups. But local policies can change. The rules are changing in California and it’s not going to be such a good deal anymore in the future.

[epistasis]

Utilities are, by and large, not economically rational actors. In addition to extreme bias in the C-suite towards old tech, they are highly constrained in decision making by public utility commissions, and decision making is often based on information that is 5-10 years old. It takes papers like this getting published, then publicized enough so that they PUC can't ignore it, before info can enter an IRP that plays out over 5-10 years.