Steal electric vehicles' power to recharge the grid?

 

I was mind-boggled to read about a proposed "solution" to California's electricity woes.

California’s largest electric utility PG&E wants to suck the batteries of electric-vehicle owners plugged into charging stations to stabilize the grid during unstable periods. The Ford F-150 already allows for bidirectional charging, but that was sold as a benefit to the owner as a kind of independent generator for households during blackouts. PG&E wants to use it to commandeer all EV batteries and use their power to prevent grid collapse.

. . .

Does anyone see the problem here? California’s power grid is destabilizing for a number of reasons, mainly from nonsensical and hypocritical public policies. Chief among those are (a) a refusal to use scalable power sources (oil, gas, coal, nuclear) for demand at current levels, and (b) forcing Californians to transfer their vehicles to the grid rather than use gasoline for independent power, thus escalating demand on the grid dramatically.

This proposal doesn’t solve either of those problems. It instead creates a kind of three-card Monty with the grid — shifting power to the vehicles, and then pulling it back when the state decides to apply it elsewhere. It’s only an illusion of a solution; no additional power gets created. PG&E and the state would simply confiscate that power for their own uses as they see fit. Technically, the grid would operate more efficiently if it never charged the EVs at all, considering the inevitable power losses that would take place in regional “bidirectional charging.”

It’s the ultimate in authoritarian redistribution — no real production, and lots of opportunity for losses and scarcity rationing.

And what does that mean for car owners? PG&E argues that cars are parked 95% of the time, a rationalization for energy seizure which may be true but is irrelevant. The issue for car owners is having the car function the (arguable) 5% of the time they need to travel — to work, school, social functions, and commerce.

What happens when car owners wake up in the morning to go to work to find that their car has been drained overnight to “stabilize the grid”? What happens when they all plug them in at the same time to get them charged enough to go to work? Wouldn’t that sudden demand destabilize the grid?

Nor is that the only issue for car owners in this new proposal. Unlike gas tanks, which can last for decades, batteries have a finite number of charge/discharge cycles before they begin to fail.

There's more at the link.

I can envisage situations in which this proposal might actually kill people.  For example:

• You need to evacuate your home in a hurry due to an approaching wildfire - but you find that your previously fully-charged vehicle is now charged to only about 30%, because the rest of the battery's capacity was sucked into the power grid the night before.  You no longer have enough range to evacuate to a safer place.  Sucks to be you, I guess.
• A member of your family needs to get to hospital at once, if not sooner.  Ambulances are tied up on other emergency calls, and can't get to you for an hour or more.  You decide to drive your family member yourself - only to find there's not enough battery charge to get there, thanks to PG&E having drawn it down to help deal with an overstressed electrical grid.

That's not counting interfering with normal use like getting to work, or going on a day trip with family.  If you get into your vehicle in the morning and find there's not enough range or power to get you where you need to be, you're going to be (justifiably) very angry - but if Senate Bill 233 becomes law in California, there's every prospect that might happen.

Still, I guess that doesn't matter if you're a patriotic Californian (as that state's power operators and politicians clearly expect you to be).  It's for the good of the state!  The good of the people!  You should be pleased and proud to do your bit to help out!

Yeah.  Riiiiiiiight . . .

Peter