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> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars. What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the

> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars. What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the same purpose? The kind of idiot that wants to generate income through arbitrage by storing energy in his EV when prices are low and selling it back to the grid during peak hours when prices are high? Don't forget the kind of person buying this kind of vehicle today also probably has a multiple car garage.

causi 4y ago
How long do you suppose it's going to take to make back their investment? For it to pay off in ten years they'd have to be making fifty dollars a month from arbitrage.
- CyanLite4 4y ago
  People that buy $100k EVs aren’t worried about ROI. FWIW, Ford has sold out of these for the next 2 years, so they must be doing something right.
  - protomyth 4y ago
    Or very, very wrong, since it's Ford and they cannot meet demand for a truck.
    - vl 4y ago
      Even Tesla can’t meet demand for EVs.
      - protomyth 4y ago
        With all due respect, Ford has long experience in manufacturing and they are not meeting demand for the F150 Electric or the Maverick. They also had problems with the Bronco (non EV).
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  An 15 mpg gasoline truck might use $100,000 in fuel over its lifetime. Buying a $40,000 electric truck pays off really quick. Selling power back to the grid is just gravy.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Electricity isn’t free. You should include that in your comparison costs.
    - johnrgrace 4y ago
      Overnight in Texas it often is free in the wholesale markets.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      It also varies. It can be over 50 cents some places and under 5 cents in others. In comparison, people complain how much more gasoline costs in California compared to elsewhere, but the difference between $6 and $4 doesn't really affect my $100,000 figure all that much. So I can do the electricity math for myself, but not for others.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    That is 300,000 miles at $5/gallon. I don't know what gas prices will go to, but very few trucks go that far before they are scrapped - they absolutely can go a a lot more than that, but most do not.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      Yes, "might" is carrying a lot of weight in my comment. A good number of trucks do hit 300,000 miles.
- pengaru 4y ago
  In Texas should electricity prices go sideways again it might take very little time. But honestly I don't know, it's not something I've looked into. If prices become increasingly variable coupled to demand and impact of generation source at time of use, I imagine it could be quite lucrative and that might be a useful incentive to get effectively decentralized peaker plants in the form of grid-tied residential batteries caching cheap cleanly-sourced electricity.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Mvandenbergh 4y ago
  Assuming that no more than 50% of the 100kWh battery is used, and a full use of the 50kWh every day as part of diurnal power management, that's $0.032 / kWh. $32 / MWh wholesale is an arbitrage that could be done on many days in CAISO today. I don't particularly think that people will use that much of their battery or do so every day of course but it does show that it's not an orders of magnitude implausible scenario either.
  - singhrac 4y ago
    If you use the battery for internal use (i.e. use it to run your AC during the day) you'll save more than the wholesale price difference from your utility bill (since consumer prices are higher than wholesale). A lot of this thinking assumes that you'll have the battery plugged in ready to operate all the time though, and doesn't consider accelerated depreciation on the battery (if that's a problem, I'm not sure).
WJW 4y ago
That kind of idiot would hopefully also not do the math on how many cycles electric vehicle batteries can take and thus how much such a battery pack depreciates per cycle. In all but the most extreme grids, the amount of depreciation is vastly larger than the amount of money you could possibly hope to gain by arbitraging electricity prices. There is a reason that true large-scale storage is so far almost exclusively the domain of pumped hydro, which has a much longer life in terms of cycles than batteries. (Before anyone brings up the Tesla battery in Australia, that is an edge case where the grid needed more capacity for grid stabilisation. Almost anywhere where you would find one of the electric pickups from the article would also have a stable enough grid that you cannot replicate that with the car battery.)
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Cycling a battery from 75% to 25% and back puts very little wear on the battery. A battery might have a 3000 cycle lifetime, but that's a 100% -> 0% -> 100% cycle. 3000 cycles is already 10 years at just under 1 cycle per day. Adding an order of magnitude more cycles by cycling between 75% and 25% gets you a century. Something else is going to die first.
- Ottolay 4y ago
  Lithium Ion batteries degrade very little with low C mid range charge cycles. The time/temperature/SoC degredation is greater. Hence why you don't want to leave a battery sitting at 100%.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  Someone else linked this battery earlier: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48v-100ah/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48... 5kwh for $1500 with 3000 cycles is $.10/kwh. I'm oversimplifying here as the real cost is higher, but the arbitrage opportunity only has to offer ~$.20/kwh to be generally profitable with a battery like that. Some time of use plans are already there daily. I don't think the person taking advantage of this sounds like any "kind of idiot".

causi 4y ago

How long do you suppose it's going to take to make back their investment? For it to pay off in ten years they'd have to be making fifty dollars a month from arbitrage.

CyanLite4 4y ago
People that buy $100k EVs aren’t worried about ROI. FWIW, Ford has sold out of these for the next 2 years, so they must be doing something right.
- protomyth 4y ago
  Or very, very wrong, since it's Ford and they cannot meet demand for a truck.
  - vl 4y ago
    Even Tesla can’t meet demand for EVs.
    - protomyth 4y ago
      With all due respect, Ford has long experience in manufacturing and they are not meeting demand for the F150 Electric or the Maverick. They also had problems with the Bronco (non EV).
bryanlarsen 4y ago
An 15 mpg gasoline truck might use $100,000 in fuel over its lifetime. Buying a $40,000 electric truck pays off really quick. Selling power back to the grid is just gravy.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Electricity isn’t free. You should include that in your comparison costs.
  - johnrgrace 4y ago
    Overnight in Texas it often is free in the wholesale markets.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    It also varies. It can be over 50 cents some places and under 5 cents in others. In comparison, people complain how much more gasoline costs in California compared to elsewhere, but the difference between $6 and $4 doesn't really affect my $100,000 figure all that much. So I can do the electricity math for myself, but not for others.
- bluGill 4y ago
  That is 300,000 miles at $5/gallon. I don't know what gas prices will go to, but very few trucks go that far before they are scrapped - they absolutely can go a a lot more than that, but most do not.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Yes, "might" is carrying a lot of weight in my comment. A good number of trucks do hit 300,000 miles.
pengaru 4y ago
In Texas should electricity prices go sideways again it might take very little time. But honestly I don't know, it's not something I've looked into. If prices become increasingly variable coupled to demand and impact of generation source at time of use, I imagine it could be quite lucrative and that might be a useful incentive to get effectively decentralized peaker plants in the form of grid-tied residential batteries caching cheap cleanly-sourced electricity.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Mvandenbergh 4y ago
Assuming that no more than 50% of the 100kWh battery is used, and a full use of the 50kWh every day as part of diurnal power management, that's $0.032 / kWh. $32 / MWh wholesale is an arbitrage that could be done on many days in CAISO today. I don't particularly think that people will use that much of their battery or do so every day of course but it does show that it's not an orders of magnitude implausible scenario either.
- singhrac 4y ago
  If you use the battery for internal use (i.e. use it to run your AC during the day) you'll save more than the wholesale price difference from your utility bill (since consumer prices are higher than wholesale). A lot of this thinking assumes that you'll have the battery plugged in ready to operate all the time though, and doesn't consider accelerated depreciation on the battery (if that's a problem, I'm not sure).

WJW 4y ago

That kind of idiot would hopefully also not do the math on how many cycles electric vehicle batteries can take and thus how much such a battery pack depreciates per cycle. In all but the most extreme grids, the amount of depreciation is vastly larger than the amount of money you could possibly hope to gain by arbitraging electricity prices. There is a reason that true large-scale storage is so far almost exclusively the domain of pumped hydro, which has a much longer life in terms of cycles than batteries. (Before anyone brings up the Tesla battery in Australia, that is an edge case where the grid needed more capacity for grid stabilisation. Almost anywhere where you would find one of the electric pickups from the article would also have a stable enough grid that you cannot replicate that with the car battery.)

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Cycling a battery from 75% to 25% and back puts very little wear on the battery. A battery might have a 3000 cycle lifetime, but that's a 100% -> 0% -> 100% cycle. 3000 cycles is already 10 years at just under 1 cycle per day. Adding an order of magnitude more cycles by cycling between 75% and 25% gets you a century. Something else is going to die first.
Ottolay 4y ago
Lithium Ion batteries degrade very little with low C mid range charge cycles. The time/temperature/SoC degredation is greater. Hence why you don't want to leave a battery sitting at 100%.
_ea1k 4y ago
Someone else linked this battery earlier: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48v-100ah/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48... 5kwh for $1500 with 3000 cycles is $.10/kwh. I'm oversimplifying here as the real cost is higher, but the arbitrage opportunity only has to offer ~$.20/kwh to be generally profitable with a battery like that. Some time of use plans are already there daily. I don't think the person taking advantage of this sounds like any "kind of idiot".