I have no problem with VW trying to make some money selling power back to electrical utilities but is it holding up the release of a vehicle to home (v2H) capable ID.4 next year while it tries to figure out how to make money with vehicle (V2G) to grid? If so, it is likely to be a long wait. I'm guessing V2H could be morphed into V2G if VW ever figures a way around the greed and bought politicians of the utilities and their fossil fuel suppliers.
Bidirectional charging next year for the ID.4 or NOT?
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Here is the original report I think that talked about it: VW News: Volkswagen wants to use electric cars as energy storage (handelsblatt.com) (in german)
If that report is to be believed, the engineering was already in test back last winter. That seems to me to make sense given the time to test these, etc. Fundamentally, there isn't a whole lot of 'electronics difference between V2L, V2H, and V2G as far as I know. It has a circuit designed to discharge over a range of conditions that should largely be software controlled. But I also suspect (guessing) it will initially show up as V2L. After V2L, it will most likely require a more advanced EVSE that supports bi-directional flow and who knows what else to provide V2H and V2G. Certainly, V2H you could probably look at as roughly the same as a solar setup? But V2G isn't allowed everywhere in the US, since it's both state and local utility controlled. I'm not sure about Germany for instance. But I'd think here in the US you could be looking at a lot more cost to enable it potentially and then on a house-by-house case.
Are you waiting on it to happen before you buy?
If that report is to be believed, the engineering was already in test back last winter. That seems to me to make sense given the time to test these, etc. Fundamentally, there isn't a whole lot of 'electronics difference between V2L, V2H, and V2G as far as I know. It has a circuit designed to discharge over a range of conditions that should largely be software controlled. But I also suspect (guessing) it will initially show up as V2L. After V2L, it will most likely require a more advanced EVSE that supports bi-directional flow and who knows what else to provide V2H and V2G. Certainly, V2H you could probably look at as roughly the same as a solar setup? But V2G isn't allowed everywhere in the US, since it's both state and local utility controlled. I'm not sure about Germany for instance. But I'd think here in the US you could be looking at a lot more cost to enable it potentially and then on a house-by-house case.
Are you waiting on it to happen before you buy?
Yes. I am in the queue for a Ford Lightning and have some hope of getting one next year. If VW comes through with V2H I will get an ID.4 for my wife. Not sure if it is only V2L. IMHO V2G is not going to happen unless VW, Ford and other EV makers join together and beat all the privately-owned electrical utilities to death.
Here is the Google-supplied translation of the article:
Electromobility "Bidirectional charging":
This is how Volkswagen wants to earn money from storing electricity So far, electric cars can only charge and not deliver electricity. The VW Group will change that in the coming year. Other manufacturers are likely to follow suit.
(Stefan Menzel is the specialist for the automotive industry at Handelsblatt. Stefan Menzel 04/05/2021 - 12:31 pm )
A VW Passat charging:
In the future, the electric cars from Wolfsburg will also be able to deliver their electricity again - and will become a huge storage facility. Source: dpa Electric cars are to become storage A VW Passat charging: In the future, the electric cars from Wolfsburg will also be able to deliver their electricity again - and will become a huge storage facility. (Photo: dpa) Düsseldorf Germany is wasteful of its green electricity on many days. Often the wind on the North and Baltic Seas blows so strongly that the electricity cannot be completely consumed. 6500 gigawatt hours (GWh) are lost every year because there is insufficient storage capacity. That corresponds to more than one percent of the annual consumption in Germany. The auto industry is now promising a remedy. The vehicle manufacturers want to offer their growing fleet of electric vehicles as the energy storage of the future. With the 6,500 GWh of unused electricity, 2.7 million purely battery-powered electric cars could be driven for a year, Volkswagen calculates. The cars should not only use up the electricity, but should also be able to return it to the grid when the supply is low and the cars themselves are unused on the charging station. In this way, electric cars can help network operators to better manage fluctuations in the supply of green electricity.
Who knows whether VW will follow through with the promised Bi-directional, and when. Only a few like the F150 Lightning and Tesla Cybertruck are building a decent sized (>2000 watt) inverter right into the truck for V2L. Its mostly software updates needed in the ID4 to enable it. The hardware is well proven, I have had multiple combined inverter/chargers for 35 years with my off-grid and on-grid solar systems. The hardware to do any of them on the ID.4 (even V2L) is a separate box since it requires an inverter, and a combined inverter/charger like VW and many others are showing makes sense since it can share some of the high power electronics. Going to the grid V2G is much more complex since it needs transfer switches, and anti-islanding protection to prevent powerline workers getting shocked like most solar inverters now have. And both the electricans and codes need updated to handle it. Those will be the biggest time limit, maybe not next year. Here is a big thread about it:
www.vwidtalk.com
If you really want V2L you can buy a 12 volt 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter for <$200 and hook it to any ID.4 without waiting until 2022 models and get that feature today. Edit: I already have 1 that I will use for camping and home emergency power. But I don't have my ID.4 yet.
VW Bi-directional charging in 2022?
VW announced MEB platform will be able to return power to grid (or home). Hope there will be a retrofit kit for 2021 ID.4 users, but unlikely. "The test vehicles are running, we are in the last pulls with the preparations," confirms VW Development Board Member Thomas Ulbrich in an interview...
www.vwidtalk.com
If you really want V2L you can buy a 12 volt 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter for <$200 and hook it to any ID.4 without waiting until 2022 models and get that feature today. Edit: I already have 1 that I will use for camping and home emergency power. But I don't have my ID.4 yet.
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Yeah I think vehicle to anything other than load in the US anyhow is probably a ways off. Whether the car is capable or not. Everything that needs to change is beyond the car other than some minor changes as far as I know.
So I wouldn’t bet on it either. All the ones with enough oomph to do much as trucks that aren’t on the market yet other than show cars and presumably cars beyond closed doors in test settings.
So I wouldn’t bet on it either. All the ones with enough oomph to do much as trucks that aren’t on the market yet other than show cars and presumably cars beyond closed doors in test settings.
I did that with my Bolt EV. Just a little inverter, like $40 on Amazon, but it ran the fridge and a few lights very easily. I'm keeping it for when I might ever see my ID.4.
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V2G has existed in Europe for years. I know a few people who have V2G enabled Leafs in the UK, there are a bunch of V2G tariffs available, some are simple: plug in your BEV from 6pm to 6am on 10 occasions in a month and get £30 off your power bill, 20 occasions and get £60, others trade wholesale rates (a 10x or more difference between evening and early-hours electricity prices is normal, sometimes the early-hours price goes negative).
There is nothing technically stopping V2G or V2H right now. The delay is caused by BEV manufacturers trying to figure out how the money made from this can go to them rather than the BEV owner.
There is nothing technically stopping V2G or V2H right now. The delay is caused by BEV manufacturers trying to figure out how the money made from this can go to them rather than the BEV owner.
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Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe any car manufacturer is ever going to warrant an EV that's being used for anything other than low level vehicle to load situations...like camping with a coffee maker, etc. Why would they? It creates a situation that's beyond their control and exposes their battery to unknown hazards. I know there are multitudes of reasons why this should NOT be the case, but when has logic like this ever ruled car makers in the past?
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I disagree entirely.
1) The situation is entirely within the control of the BEV manufacturer.
2) There are huge profits to be made. Wholesale prices vary spectacularly in a few hours and this is timed perfectly to discharge when most BEV “owners “ get home and charge before they wake up. The problem is how those profits can be channelled to the manufacturer rather than the “owner”.
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Yeah, I agree that it's technically not difficult. The trouble in the US is that every state and region in the US has different laws, rules, etc. about generation, transmission, etc. You go from Texas which is lightly regulated, not interconnected, and has 'free trade' (hello nasty freeze last winter), to states like California that are quite the opposite.
The actual supply to your home in the US is highly regulated at the state level and almost always, as far as my experience, is a monopoly in any given market. Commerical buyers in certain areas MAY be able to choose a different company based on locations adjacent, but I'm going to guess those are the rarity from my experience. But I've never been in a residential situation where I had a choice (I've lived in MO, IA, MD, SC, and FL, though over time those older states may have changed since I lived there). These suppliers might be a commercial company like Duke, a city or municipalities power & light company, or a rural electric COOP just as some examples. And the prices they set for this part of the service is usually 'fixed' by the state Public Service Commission or some entity similar.
Power generation, by contrast, is more competitive, but in only a few places (like Texas) can you actually choose your generator independent of your supplier. Most of the time, at least the supplier enters contracts with the generators (or owns the generation facilities outright) for contracted pricing that is then passed on to us as the user. Generators can range from nuclear power plants (many of which are independent), utility-owned systems, or large public works projects like Hoover Damn, the Tennessee Valley Authority, etc.
That's a simplification for sure, as there are grid and interconnect operators in the middle, etc. but you get the main idea.
Most electric bills now are broken out between the service side and generation side to show the costs for each, and the service side is usually 'fixed' and the generation side is usually scaled somehow. In my part of Flordia anyhow, we have Duke Energy. They have a 2 tier price structure for generation cost: everything below a set consumption level is priced at a lower rate and everything above that consumption price is priced at a higher rate. But again, I don't have a choice of how my electricity is generated, the mix, etc. The power company sets all that for me in agreement with the Florida Public Utility Commission (again regulated pricing).
In none of those states that I've lived in are there concepts of peak and non-peak costs, etc. That does exisit in other places in the US, so someone familiar with that should comment how it works and not me.
I can in most get a small discount for allowing the electric company to install a demand manager at your home that can rapidly cycle on and off things like the water heater, etc. to conserve power in peak demand times. But in most that was optional. Only MD I seem to recall had it as a mandatory feature.
So in almost all the places I've lived the issue of interconnecting and pushing electricity to the grid is with the 'supplier' side of the equation (regardless really of the generation side). At the point of generating whether it be a car or a solar system or whatever, you are becoming a supplier under a contractual agreement with the supplier and you have to meet certain system requirements to do so. A lot of people it seems in Florida don't install things like Powerwalls, etc. and so their power companies just kick them off the grid in the event of widescale power issues so they are not unsafely pushing electricity into a system that should be 'offline' for repair.
That's where an EV COULD come into play, but again, a homeowner is at least going to have to work with a qualified electrician and possibly their electric company to make sure they've installed the correct equipment to disconnect from the grid during an outage for safety reasons and install a net meter and enter into a net metering agreement for providing power during normal operations. Some other folks that have maybe done it can expand on that if there other requirements I haven't mentioned.
Cars, to me, are NOT net generators like solar systems. In reality, they are just energy storage when not used, all you'd really be providing is a transfer of already consumed energy back to the grid in the event of a net demand to meet peak demand. And then you'd presumably be consuming it again later to recharge your car.
And all of that is why I'm skeptical, at least in the US, that V2G is a big deal to VW. Even V2H seems a stretch with all the extra equipment required, though they could presumably provide a service that would do all that at a turnkey price for you. But it just seems like a lot to manage and it's why companies like SolarCity, etc. I think struggle to be profitable. There is just no one size fits all for the entire US.
The actual supply to your home in the US is highly regulated at the state level and almost always, as far as my experience, is a monopoly in any given market. Commerical buyers in certain areas MAY be able to choose a different company based on locations adjacent, but I'm going to guess those are the rarity from my experience. But I've never been in a residential situation where I had a choice (I've lived in MO, IA, MD, SC, and FL, though over time those older states may have changed since I lived there). These suppliers might be a commercial company like Duke, a city or municipalities power & light company, or a rural electric COOP just as some examples. And the prices they set for this part of the service is usually 'fixed' by the state Public Service Commission or some entity similar.
Power generation, by contrast, is more competitive, but in only a few places (like Texas) can you actually choose your generator independent of your supplier. Most of the time, at least the supplier enters contracts with the generators (or owns the generation facilities outright) for contracted pricing that is then passed on to us as the user. Generators can range from nuclear power plants (many of which are independent), utility-owned systems, or large public works projects like Hoover Damn, the Tennessee Valley Authority, etc.
That's a simplification for sure, as there are grid and interconnect operators in the middle, etc. but you get the main idea.
Most electric bills now are broken out between the service side and generation side to show the costs for each, and the service side is usually 'fixed' and the generation side is usually scaled somehow. In my part of Flordia anyhow, we have Duke Energy. They have a 2 tier price structure for generation cost: everything below a set consumption level is priced at a lower rate and everything above that consumption price is priced at a higher rate. But again, I don't have a choice of how my electricity is generated, the mix, etc. The power company sets all that for me in agreement with the Florida Public Utility Commission (again regulated pricing).
In none of those states that I've lived in are there concepts of peak and non-peak costs, etc. That does exisit in other places in the US, so someone familiar with that should comment how it works and not me.
I can in most get a small discount for allowing the electric company to install a demand manager at your home that can rapidly cycle on and off things like the water heater, etc. to conserve power in peak demand times. But in most that was optional. Only MD I seem to recall had it as a mandatory feature.So in almost all the places I've lived the issue of interconnecting and pushing electricity to the grid is with the 'supplier' side of the equation (regardless really of the generation side). At the point of generating whether it be a car or a solar system or whatever, you are becoming a supplier under a contractual agreement with the supplier and you have to meet certain system requirements to do so. A lot of people it seems in Florida don't install things like Powerwalls, etc. and so their power companies just kick them off the grid in the event of widescale power issues so they are not unsafely pushing electricity into a system that should be 'offline' for repair.
That's where an EV COULD come into play, but again, a homeowner is at least going to have to work with a qualified electrician and possibly their electric company to make sure they've installed the correct equipment to disconnect from the grid during an outage for safety reasons and install a net meter and enter into a net metering agreement for providing power during normal operations. Some other folks that have maybe done it can expand on that if there other requirements I haven't mentioned.
Cars, to me, are NOT net generators like solar systems. In reality, they are just energy storage when not used, all you'd really be providing is a transfer of already consumed energy back to the grid in the event of a net demand to meet peak demand. And then you'd presumably be consuming it again later to recharge your car.
And all of that is why I'm skeptical, at least in the US, that V2G is a big deal to VW. Even V2H seems a stretch with all the extra equipment required, though they could presumably provide a service that would do all that at a turnkey price for you. But it just seems like a lot to manage and it's why companies like SolarCity, etc. I think struggle to be profitable. There is just no one size fits all for the entire US.
Yeah, I agree that it's technically not difficult. The trouble in the US is that every state and region in the US has different laws, rules, etc. about generation, transmission, etc. You go from Texas which is lightly regulated, not interconnected, and has 'free trade' (hello nasty freeze last winter), to states like California that are quite the opposite.
The actual supply to your home in the US is highly regulated at the state level and almost always, as far as my experience, is a monopoly in any given market. Commerical buyers in certain areas MAY be able to choose a different company based on locations adjacent, but I'm going to guess those are the rarity from my experience. But I've never been in a residential situation where I had a choice (I've lived in MO, IA, MD, SC, and FL, though over time those older states may have changed since I lived there). These suppliers might be a commercial company like Duke, a city or municipalities power & light company, or a rural electric COOP just as some examples. And the prices they set for this part of the service is usually 'fixed' by the state Public Service Commission or some entity similar.
Power generation, by contrast, is more competitive, but in only a few places (like Texas) can you actually choose your generator independent of your supplier. Most of the time, at least the supplier enters contracts with the generators (or owns the generation facilities outright) for contracted pricing that is then passed on to us as the user. Generators can range from nuclear power plants (many of which are independent), utility-owned systems, or large public works projects like Hoover Damn, the Tennessee Valley Authority, etc.
That's a simplification for sure, as there are grid and interconnect operators in the middle, etc. but you get the main idea.
Most electric bills now are broken out between the service side and generation side to show the costs for each, and the service side is usually 'fixed' and the generation side is usually scaled somehow. In my part of Flordia anyhow, we have Duke Energy. They have a 2 tier price structure for generation cost: everything below a set consumption level is priced at a lower rate and everything above that consumption price is priced at a higher rate. But again, I don't have a choice of how my electricity is generated, the mix, etc. The power company sets all that for me in agreement with the Florida Public Utility Commission (again regulated pricing).
In none of those states that I've lived in are there concepts of peak and non-peak costs, etc. That does exisit in other places in the US, so someone familiar with that should comment how it works and not me.
So in almost all the places I've lived the issue of interconnecting and pushing electricity to the grid is with the 'supplier' side of the equation (regardless really of the generation side). At the point of generating whether it be a car or a solar system or whatever, you are becoming a supplier under a contractual agreement with the supplier and you have to meet certain system requirements to do so. A lot of people it seems in Florida don't install things like Powerwalls, etc. and so their power companies just kick them off the grid in the event of widescale power issues so they are not unsafely pushing electricity into a system that should be 'offline' for repair.
That's where an EV COULD come into play, but again, a homeowner is at least going to have to work with a qualified electrician and possibly their electric company to make sure they've installed the correct equipment to disconnect from the grid during an outage for safety reasons and install a net meter and enter into a net metering agreement for providing power during normal operations. Some other folks that have maybe done it can expand on that if there other requirements I haven't mentioned.
Cars, to me, are NOT net generators like solar systems. In reality, they are just energy storage when not used, all you'd really be providing is a transfer of already consumed energy back to the grid in the event of a net demand to meet peak demand. And then you'd presumably be consuming it again later to recharge your car.
And all of that is why I'm skeptical, at least in the US, that V2G is a big deal to VW. Even V2H seems a stretch with all the extra equipment required, though they could presumably provide a service that would do all that at a turnkey price for you. But it just seems like a lot to manage and it's why companies like SolarCity, etc. I think struggle to be profitable. There is just no one size fits all for the entire US.
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The internet ate your reply.
I think V2G is a strawman the utilities put out there to keep people from thinking about V2H. Looks to me like the only extra equipment I'm going to need for the Lightning charger is a transfer switch, maybe a little home rewiring.. V2H can be done in a pretty straightforward manner and will be more reliable than the grid - certainly in power emergencies.
Yes and this is the same thing you could do with any external inverter, even the 12v 2kw $200 option I mention above could be used with the proper transfer switch. There will be lots of business for electricians between this and EV charger installs.
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There are hybriod inverters nowdays that do not require a transfer switch (it is built in).
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Elon does not want V2G to eat into his Powerwall business.
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That’s probably more true than we know. LOL. One car is like 4 power walls.
This box seems to be the first to do bi-directional for home. Still pretty expensive at $4k but that won’t last long I doubt.
Wallbox Quasar bidirectional home DC charger will turn EVs into a huge Tesla Powerwall
Here's why Quasar, a bidirectional DC charger for homes that is expected to retail for around $4,000, should be in every EV owner's home in a few years
It could also be why ID.4 doesn’t yet do plug and charge. Plug and charge and V2G use the same ISO protocol, which governs all vehicle to grid communication from what I’m reading. Could be coming on next years model. And maybe they swap the battery unit in our cars for a new one Tesla style? Or maybe it’s already in their but not enabled at the moment either.
Regardless, I still suspect in the US that V2H will be easier than V2G for most. A hybrid inverter/transfer switch is easier that balances power just as it does for home generator is easier than net metering, external shut offs for line workers, etc. not everyone, but most.
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More than just software... lots of existing discussions and links here...
www.vwidtalk.com
VW Bi-directional charging in 2022?
VW announced MEB platform will be able to return power to grid (or home). Hope there will be a retrofit kit for 2021 ID.4 users, but unlikely. "The test vehicles are running, we are in the last pulls with the preparations," confirms VW Development Board Member Thomas Ulbrich in an interview...
www.vwidtalk.com
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