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Imagine the gas station selling you a tank of gas for $10 and buying it back for $15 later in the day, all while your car sits on your driveway
by iso1631 4y ago
Imagine the gas station selling you a tank of gas for $10 and buying it back for $15 later in the day, all while your car sits on your driveway
- ThunderSizzle 4y agoIt will never work that way, except for the lucky few. Have you ever tried selling books back to the school store? They'll buy it from you for $10 when you paid $100 for it. Same thing will happen for this.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoIt's trivial to prevent the power company from doing this -- just unplug your car. They can't force anybody to participate, so if they want participation they'll have to pay and pay well.
- olivermarks 4y agoBut then you won't be able to drive your electric car because it's not charged up...
- tuatoru 4y agoIn reality they'll buy back ten percent of that tank, not all of it. You'll be able to control the amount.
- geysersam 4y agoThen you'll change utility company.
- crote 4y agoEVs can still be driven when they aren't 100% full at the start of the trip. If your vehicle has a range of 400 miles and you know you only need 60 miles of range in the next 48 hours, why not sell 100-200 miles of range for short-term grid storage? You're only going to drive 60 miles, so it doesn't matter if you start with 400 miles of capacity remaining or 200 miles.
- _Algernon_ 4y agoThe difference is with the book your alternative is to not sell it back and getting 0$, assuming you've extracted all value. In the case of the car, you can choose to not sell it, and use it for driving instead. The incentives are completely different. You're comparing a scenario where they have you by the balls with a case where both parties are more or less equally powerful market participants.
- iso1631 4y agoIf you don't like the fee they'll pay you then don't sell the power back. If you don't like the cost they charge you, don't buy the power.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y agoA 50% return on a 6 hour investment? Where can I fucking sign up? That won't happen. What will happen is you will pay the max rate when charging because your new smart meter now charges you based on peak consumption (not what it was sold as) and then you'll get the minimum when you involuntarily sell back. Oh and the govt will take its 21% tax on both transactions.
- vel0city 4y agoWholesale rates on electricity can swing quite a bit. I've been watching rates on ERCOT swing from lows of -$1.40/MWh to the current spot of $43/MWh to highs in the few hundred dollar range. It would take a pretty massive capex to hedge it enough to really get a stable return though. It's definitely been making me itch to put up a lot of solar panels and batteries in a field though, looking at these wholesale rates over the last few years.
- dokem 4y agoImagine thinking the government or big-business would sell a money making machine. Why not capture it themselves?
- geysersam 4y agoCar owners already have these huge batteries. For any other actor that would be a huge capital expense.
- dokem 4y agoIt's nothing compared to the cost of building and maintaining the grid. You're not on equal footing with a power company just because you have some batteries. A battery in your garage isn't meaningful capital to produce passive income. This isn't how economics works.