[SunWizard]

CNN on battery day:
Volkswagen is going huge in batteries to slash the price of electric cars

The company sold 231,600 battery electric vehicles in 2020 — less than half the number of sales Tesla made, but an increase of 214% on the previous year.

And this is good for those of us with solar PV: From 2022,Volkswagen's electric vehicles will also support technology that allows them to connect to private, commercial and public energy systems. "Electric vehicles will become mobile power banks," Diess said.

I wonder if there will be a new group of people who help pay for their car by power shifting, charge at night for the super cheap rate, sell back to the grid during peak and make $. In an expensive power state like CA or HI if you did that with 50kwh per day and the rate difference day/night is 0.30/kwh, that computes to you could make $450 a month! VW would probably not like it.

 

[ChristophW]

I wonder if there will be a new group of people who help pay for their car by power shifting, charge at night for the super cheap rate, sell back to the grid during peak and make $. In an expensive power state like CA or HI if you did that with 50kwh per day and the rate difference day/night is 0.30/kwh, that computes to you could make $450 a month! VW would probably not like it.

I’ve been dreaming about this for a while. With a home battery added to solar panels we call it peak shaving, i.e. avoiding the high late afternoon / early evening peak rate with energy stored during regular rate hours instead of sending it into the grid.
A vehicle to grid setup would put this on steroids and help you work around how the utility gets you with TOU rate structure.

However, net zero is where the fun ends. If you pump more electrons into the grid than you pulled, or fall below $0 owed, then you get paid a wholesale rate of a fraction over 3¢/kWh, and as far as I know the peak vs off peak rate differential goes away too. Even super off peak rate is way higher than wholesale. And we pay a connection fee of $10 plus tax per month. There is no way you can make serious money with a grid connected car at the moment.

I don’t think VW would mind. If you cycle through say, a third of your battery at a very controlled and even rate every day, that is far less strain than a one hour commute one way, which is totally covered by the warranty.

 

[SunWizard]

However, net zero is where the fun ends. If you pump more electrons into the grid than you pulled, or fall below $0 owed, then you get paid a wholesale rate of a fraction over 3¢/kWh, and as far as I know the peak vs off peak rate differential goes away too. Even super off peak rate is way higher than wholesale. And we pay a connection fee of $10 plus tax per month. There is no way you can make serious money with a grid connected car at the moment.

I read recently people are doing this with the Tesla powerwall. The rules on this vary drastically between states, and even local. I am net positive every year (I get a check back from the power co) and here they only pay half as much (0.05 per kwh) on the once a year "true up" that they pay me for my better than net zero power. Most people are not net positive like me, so could still benefit by whatever their power bill is, to get all the way to net zero! You could make serious money if you still had a $300/ month power bill like many people I know!

Install even a tiny PV system, and power shift with your car for the rest to get to net zero.

 

[Swimrwo]

I've been doing the Tesla Powerwall shift here for the last 3 months and I'm sitting at 90% coverage. I won't see the "true up" for another 9 months but I believe I'm under similar rules (PGE) to @ChristophW and won't expect to see anything more than a few pennies over net zero. About 2/3 of my solar goes to Powerwall recharge and immediate usage while the other 1/3 goes back to the grid right now.

My peak rate usage is 99% solar/battery and it would be great if the next generation of BEV will allow me to bring my partial-peak rate battery/solar % up so that that is covered also.