Too soon to worship passenger EV Vehicle-to-Grid?

The EV industry and Energy journalists love to talk about Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and how great the future is going to be when all these EV’s are going to act as a grid resource and utilities and EV drivers will live in harmony and communion with each other.? But I feel like much of this talk is bullsh*t.?

Maybe I’m jaded.? Over a decade ago, when I was trying to get Mapawatt.com off the ground I wrote over 500 blog posts educating homeowners on clean energy topics.? Do you know what my most popular posts were? Not ones on home energy monitoring or energy efficiency or rooftop solar PV. They were the ones uncovering energy scams.? I even had to write a post on why perpetual motion (let alone perpetual motion that ALSO generates electricity (which is an additional load beyond simple friction) was impossible.?

And I’m not saying V2G is a scam - because I like the idea of V2G for fleets of a certain size and use case - but I think a lot of the talk around V2G is misguided because it focuses on passenger EVs as a resource for utilities (ie Grid Backup) without actually addressing the costs associated with the purchase and installation and operation (ie recurring software costs) of V2G equipment.? In other words, most of the conversation looks at V2G from the grid operator’s perspective, and not the EV owner’s perspective, while simultaneously completely ignoring costs.?

Some utilities might say, “Don’t worry about those costs, because we’ll get the PUC to let us charge ratepayers for a program that we can use to pay for all those costs!”...but I digress...

In my 3rd Newsletter post I covered the costs associated with?adding a V2G installation using the F-150 Lighting. I said:

"A few weeks ago I conducted a LinkedIn poll with the question: How much would you pay (turn-key) to have a bidirectional EV charging system (aka V2G, aka backup power) installed? There were 42 voters and only 26% of them were willing to pay over $4,000. Only 2% of them were willing to pay over $8,000. Guess how much it's probably going to cost for the correct equipment and an electrician to wire the electrical correctly for a V2G / V2H setup? Probably over $4,000 (and closer to $8,000)!"

And honestly, the actual cost of a home V2G setup is probably over $10k all in. Sure, some wealthy homeowners who live in areas with high power outages will gladly pay for this...but as a convenience for their own home, not as an act of benevolence to help the grid.

V2G evangelists may say: "But Chris! The utility will pay EV drivers for the power they export and it that will surely cover the costs of all the equipment and installation!" And to that I say "I'll believe it when I see it".

In my 6th post I mentioned how Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) probably made more sense than V2G….and I obviously still feel that way.? In the post on V2L I said:

"If I had a vehicle that allowed for V2L - like Hyundai Ioniq 5 or F-150 Lightning - I would want to power the following in off-grid or power outage applications:

• mini fridge/freezer
• small room AC unit and/or space heater
• portable LED lights
• Electronics (TV / Laptop)

And that's kind of it!

If you don't experience regular power outages, you don't actually need to power your entire home during an outage. You just need to keep your food cold and 1 or 2 rooms conditioned (bunk up!)."

Here are two ideas (that I really should be charging thousands of dollars in consulting fees to utilities and utility regulators for but you’re welcome) that make much more sense than what we traditionally read about V2G:

1. Home Battery backup paired with Rooftop solar and V2L (or Vehicle-to-battery in this case)

This deserves it's own post but adding Solar PV with battery backup (like Tesla Powerwall) and an EV that can also export power to the battery (V2L) makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. I'm sure there's a way to export Solar PV directly to an EV but that requires the EV to actually be parked in the garage in the middle of the day when Solar PV output is at its max (and most utilities are reducing what they pay for solar pv electricity exported to the grid)...so that's why a central home battery backup makes more sense.

I'm not completely reinventing the wheel here, Telsa and PGE have proven this out (minus the Tesla EV to Tesla Powerpack because Tesla's don't currently support V-to-Anything!)

1. V2L where auto OEMs provide accessories for times when there are power outages

Basically what I said in my V2L post but getting more buy-in from Auto OEMs to recommend (or sell?) approved accessories that work well with the power output from their EV's. Auto OEMs are pretty awful and doing anything that doesn't involve direct marketing of the vehicle itself...but like I said, I should be getting paid for this so feel free to reach out and I could advise on how this program would work!

In Closing:

• I think all EV's should export power in V2L applications as a base case.
• I think utilities need to figure out energy storage and how to best incorporate energy storage to improve grid resiliency and incorporate renewables better.
• I am not convinced using passenger EV's as an energy storage resource for utilities is the best way to spend the gazillions of dollars it would take to make it a valuable resource for both EV drivers and grid operators.

Think I'm an idiot? Great, prove it in the comments...preferably with some actual economic modeling comparing the following as a white paper titled something like: "Utility energy storage and grid resiliency options: stand-alone utility scale energy storage/community solar with energy storage/residential PV solar with central home battery vs. V2G capable EV as energy storage"