Battery Day side note: Elon Musk Debunks Vehicle to Grid

S

SouthernDude

Active Member
So, I'm catching up on the battery day announcement and I heard this gem. Elon and the other dude effectively debunk the concept of Vehicle to Grid.

  • Cars aren't plugged in 24/7
  • The 2 way charger itself would have to be able to disconnect the house from the grid, and that tech really isn't there.
  • It would affect driver expectations/freedom if they woke up and had their car battery fully depleted.
  • Less people would participate in energy markets than V2G enthusiasts would want to admit
  • (my point) There would have to be a crapload of expensive infrastructure installed that otherwise wouldn't be necessary. When coupled with low participation, it makes the cost of the system not worth it

The concept itself was stupid from it's very inception and hearing Elon effectively debunk it made me respect Elon more. Good to know that he doesn't just pander to hype.
 
No- not what they said. He said the first car Tesla ever did had it but people didn't use it. Tesla inverter recently reverse engineered shows the cars have it built in. You still need a piece of hardware for your home- no biggie. Power walls are a better solution. Also Baglino said future vehicles will have it vtg as offered feature. Issue is current vehicles don't have the cycles in their batteries to make it worth while- but Tesla partner CATL has cells that do for a 10% premium already. Those cells don't have the highest range. But the more advanced cells Tesla will release have more than enough cycles- enough for millions of miles of range 4600 cycles. So clearly he doesn't want to Osborn effect current sales. Also speaks to your concern because you tried to say Nikola wasn't a obvious ng scam showing your cards- yes virtual power plant is coming which is terrible for NG because Tesla already has it in some markets.

We learned Tesla stripped out cobalt from all its cell lines (if I am not mistaken) which shut down a fossil fuel talking point- fossil fuel industry is the
biggest user of cobalt in place of lead to stop knocking. We learned Tesla locked up its lithium supply and radically cut the cost to the point that it could replace all al US vehicles with what it has in its back yard. We learned Tesla made its use of nickle radically more efficient. And learned it had a radical crude silicon annode. We learned Tesla has completely redesigned the construction of automobiles with castings radically simplifying and cost cutting to also using batteries as structural elements. We learned Tesla will cut its cost to about $56 a kwh at the pack level (there is no more pack.) And we learned
Tesla (if you were paying attention) in the space of giga nevada will be able to produce 3 terawatt hours of cells- when on about 20 Twhw are needed per year to scrap all fossil fuels globally in a no compromise way and we learned Tesla will produce at least 3 terra watt hours per year by 2030 but looks like they could produce all 20 if they wanted as we also learned from a slip Tesla will have multiple terra factories per continent. We learned Giga Berlin will produce cell. Learned Shanghi will produce a million cars a year. We learned we're on rev 4 of dry rolling machine and
need rev 6-7 to really get going but its one rev ever 4 months. Learned charging and discharge speeds will greatly increase due to the new cell. Learned that Lucid needs to cut 70k from the price of its vapor dream.
 
In April 27, 2011: https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/DA/20130428/News/605151192/TL

... tornadoes knocked out power to more than 412,000 of the 1.4 million Alabama Power customers across the state. ... More than 60,000 residential and business customers in the Tuscaloosa area lost power. Brown said that as many as 75 percent of customers were without power during the peak of the outage.​

Living in Huntsville AL, our power outage was 4 days and 6 hours. During that time, we used my first Prius modification:
http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/priups.html

priups_27.jpg

priups_200.jpg


We burned ~2 gal/day to camp out at home with the highly efficient Prius catalytic converter handling carbon monoxide and muffler keeping it quiet.

As for vehicle to grid in my Model 3, 15-20 A, 120 VAC power outlets, NEMA 5-15 or NEMA 5-20, in the cabin and a second one in the frunk. It must have a minimum charge limit, like 'dog mode', so I would tap the A/C compressor and cabin fan circuits which already has the ~1.5 kW needed.

Bob Wilson
 
  • The 2 way charger itself would have to be able to disconnect the house from the grid, and that tech really isn't there.
Click to expand...
The tech already exists. All hybrid solar inverters have this today. The issue is it's a circuit that needs to be hard wired into your homes main power connection.

It would affect driver expectations/freedom if they woke up and had their car battery fully depleted.
Click to expand...

Doing it smart you'd only ever consume 10% of the battery, and only when a vehicle has a high state of charge.

I think Elons reluctance to embrace V2G stems from his ability to do maths..

1. It doesn't solve blackout issues. Unless you install additional hardware in your home (FWIW nissans V2G solution is $10,000. The cheapest V2G solution I've seen is $2,000 plus install)

2. V2G helps with peak shaving but isn't enough to cover solar and winds variance in output. So we're gonna need big *** grid batteries either way. Now if you consider the cost above to install V2G hardware at home, and only consuming a small portion of a vehicles battery, the battery not being available all the time, would that money not be better spent adding more batteries to the grid? At $50 a kWh, that $2,000 is good for 40 kWh.
 
bwilson4web said:
In April 27, 2011: https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/DA/20130428/News/605151192/TL

... tornadoes knocked out power to more than 412,000 of the 1.4 million Alabama Power customers across the state. ... More than 60,000 residential and business customers in the Tuscaloosa area lost power. Brown said that as many as 75 percent of customers were without power during the peak of the outage.​

Living in Huntsville AL, our power outage was 4 days and 6 hours. During that time, we used my first Prius modification:
http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/priups.html

priups_27.jpg

priups_200.jpg


We burned ~2 gal/day to camp out at home with the highly efficient Prius catalytic converter handling carbon monoxide and muffler keeping it quiet.

As for vehicle to grid in my Model 3, 15-20 A, 120 VAC power outlets, NEMA 5-15 or NEMA 5-20, in the cabin and a second one in the frunk. It must have a minimum charge limit, like 'dog mode', so I would tap the A/C compressor and cabin fan circuits which already has the ~1.5 kW needed.

Bob Wilson
Click to expand...
Ok. Interesting set up with the prius, but that's essentially using an ICE generator, which is different than using a battery EV. Even if you have solar panels on your roof it won't mean anything during a grid outage if you can't isolate your rooftop solar from the grid or if your car isn't parked at the house during the time that the solar panels are generating energy. Whereas it's possible to stock up on a bunch of gas before a storm to prepare to have enough energy to make it through a blackout - can't really do that with an EV. Plus, if the grid is down and the rooftop solar array can't charge the car because it's grid connected (or the house isn't suitable for rooftop solar), how is the car's battery supposed to charge?

Anyways that's really besides the point. The grid doesn't really go down very often, so it's not really something getting all hung up on because it's not addressing the fundamental problems with V2G. V2G isn't really an 'if the grid goes down scenario' concept too, so it's not accurate to characterize the problems of V2G with that scenario. Nor does this anecdote change the realities of the issues with V2G.
 
gooki said:
The tech already exists. All hybrid solar inverters have this today. The issue is it's a circuit that needs to be hard wired into your homes main power connection.



Doing it smart you'd only ever consume 10% of the battery, and only when a vehicle has a high state of charge.

I think Elons reluctance to embrace V2G stems from his ability to do maths..

1. It doesn't solve blackout issues. Unless you install additional hardware in your home (FWIW nissans V2G solution is $10,000. The cheapest V2G solution I've seen is $2,000 plus install)

2. V2G helps with peak shaving but isn't enough to cover solar and winds variance in output. So we're gonna need big *** grid batteries either way. Now if you consider the cost above to install V2G hardware at home, and only consuming a small portion of a vehicles battery, the battery not being available all the time, would that money not be better spent adding more batteries to the grid? At $50 a kWh, that $2,000 is good for 40 kWh.
Click to expand...

Considering his whole hyperloop nonsense, there may be reason to question Elon's math skills lol. However, the points levied against V2G aren't inherently math based.

1.) $10k for a V2G system? Yeah. No thanks. Just the cost of a normal 240V charger is like $200, which is literally 50 times cheaper. Why would I waste money installing that at my house? If I want to reduce my home's peak load, I would just schedule to charge my car in off peak hours instead. It doesn't make sense to spend $10k to save maybe $50 dollars a month (pretty generous assumption and not achievable for the majority of residential consumers and the fact that I'm ignoring any potential costs to charging the car away from the house), but only if you did it every single day of the year? That would take 15-16 years get an ROI on that when there are easily better options available to reduce peak use.

2.) If V2G is only about peak shaving, then which do you think would be cheaper for any given commercial building: Retrofitting the existing HVAC system (or any other major load) with a wifi connected switch that can reliably turn off the HVAC system (or any other major load) during peak extreme peaking prices, One stationary battery whose capacity, charging, and discharging can be optimized to reliably deliver consistent reductions in peak load - regardless of what time the peak load is occurring, or installing dozens of two-way EV chargers that are an order of magnitude more expensive than one-way EV chargers where the availably of the car battery is inconsistent because the users, who are not always guaranteed to be the same group every time, of the plug determine how much the battery gets used and when it gets used. Which of these options do you think would make the most sense to pursue for peak shaving? Obviously the demand response or stationary battery choice. Why would any business owner, besides the crazed V2G enthusiast or the someone who is using government grants or subsidies, install these systems? There's no consistency. It doesn't make any sense.
 
Whoops. I just realized that I missed a word in the title to the thread. It's supposed to have 'Side Note' after Day. Obviously the entirety of battery day wasn't about V2G; V2G was just an audience question at the end.
 
101101 said:
No- not what they said. He said the first car Tesla ever did had it but people didn't use it. Tesla inverter recently reverse engineered shows the cars have it built in. You still need a piece of hardware for your home- no biggie. Power walls are a better solution. Also Baglino said future vehicles will have it vtg as offered feature. Issue is current vehicles don't have the cycles in their batteries to make it worth while- but Tesla partner CATL has cells that do for a 10% premium already. Those cells don't have the highest range. But the more advanced cells Tesla will release have more than enough cycles- enough for millions of miles of range 4600 cycles. So clearly he doesn't want to Osborn effect current sales. Also speaks to your concern because you tried to say Nikola wasn't a obvious ng scam showing your cards- yes virtual power plant is coming which is terrible for NG because Tesla already has it in some markets.

We learned Tesla stripped out cobalt from all its cell lines (if I am not mistaken) which shut down a fossil fuel talking point- fossil fuel industry is the
biggest user of cobalt in place of lead to stop knocking. We learned Tesla locked up its lithium supply and radically cut the cost to the point that it could replace all al US vehicles with what it has in its back yard. We learned Tesla made its use of nickle radically more efficient. And learned it had a radical crude silicon annode. We learned Tesla has completely redesigned the construction of automobiles with castings radically simplifying and cost cutting to also using batteries as structural elements. We learned Tesla will cut its cost to about $56 a kwh at the pack level (there is no more pack.) And we learned
Tesla (if you were paying attention) in the space of giga nevada will be able to produce 3 terawatt hours of cells- when on about 20 Twhw are needed per year to scrap all fossil fuels globally in a no compromise way and we learned Tesla will produce at least 3 terra watt hours per year by 2030 but looks like they could produce all 20 if they wanted as we also learned from a slip Tesla will have multiple terra factories per continent. We learned Giga Berlin will produce cell. Learned Shanghi will produce a million cars a year. We learned we're on rev 4 of dry rolling machine and
need rev 6-7 to really get going but its one rev ever 4 months. Learned charging and discharge speeds will greatly increase due to the new cell. Learned that Lucid needs to cut 70k from the price of its vapor dream.
Click to expand...

It's literally exactly what he said:

“It will be problematic if you get to the morning, and instead of being charged, (the car) has discharged,” Musk said. “It will be better to have a Powerwall and a car operating separately. Then everything works.”

https://thedriven.io/2020/09/23/mus...chnology-it-has-lower-utility-than-you-think/
 
The YouTube video really needs to be in the Tesla forum. It's getting lost here. Anyhow good video.

Galyen wasn't impressed. His body language, arms crossed across his chest, said it all. I thought the same thing since Tesla didn't have the dry film process worked out and the other things were a year or more off from manufacturing.

Munro on the other hand went gaga over the information. He truly believes Tesla holds back information and we didn't see what's behind the curtain.

Will Galyen or Munro be right? I guess we will see.
 
marshall said:
The YouTube video really needs to be in the Tesla forum. It's getting lost here. Anyhow good video.

Galyen wasn't impressed. His body language, arms crossed across his chest, said it all. I thought the same thing since Tesla didn't have the dry film process worked out and the other things were a year or more off from manufacturing.

Munro on the other hand went gaga over the information. He truly believes Tesla holds back information and we didn't see what's behind the curtain.

Will Galyen or Munro be right? I guess we will see.
Click to expand...
I bet Tesla won't deliver on the new manufacturing method in the next three years. I bet it will be more like 5 years. Every promise that Elon has made has had a lag time to it. Why would this be any different?
 
SouthernDude said:
I bet Tesla won't deliver on the new manufacturing method in the next three years. I bet it will be more like 5 years. Every promise that Elon has made has had a lag time to it. Why would this be any different?
Click to expand...
All of it, or will some of it be sooner?
 
marshall said:
The YouTube video really needs to be in the Tesla forum. It's getting lost here. Anyhow good video.

Galyen wasn't impressed. His body language, arms crossed across his chest, said it all. I thought the same thing since Tesla didn't have the dry film process worked out and the other things were a year or more off from manufacturing.

Munro on the other hand went gaga over the information. He truly believes Tesla holds back information and we didn't see what's behind the curtain.

Will Galyen or Munro be right? I guess we will see.
Click to expand...

I stopped watching after a few minutes. Munro's fanboyism was just too much to take.

I tend to agree that the things that they are talking about are still several years out.
 
Well Munro was certainly excited, but from his perspective I can see why. I believe the new cell design and making the battery part of the structure can be done in less than two years if Tesla can get the the manufacturing of the dry film process online.

As Munro believes, we don't know what's behind the curtain.
 
marshall said:
Well Munro was certainly excited, but from his perspective I can see why. I believe the new cell design and making the battery part of the structure can be done in less than two years if Tesla can get the the manufacturing of the dry film process online.
Click to expand...

Making the battery a part of the structure basically means no servicability. If you have a severe battery problem, what do you do - discard the car??? That seems like a dealbreaker to me.
 
ericy said:
Making the battery a part of the structure basically means no servicability. If you have a severe battery problem, what do you do - discard the car??? That seems like a dealbreaker to me.
Click to expand...
There may still be a way to service bad batteries, but it will probably be difficult. We won't know until Tesla starts producing cars with the new design.
 
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