By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
Recently, President Donald J. Trump yet again riffed on how much wind power kills birds and opined that if the wind doesn’t blow (for wind power) or the sun doesn’t shine (for solar power), “we have a problem.”
Well, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, EVs could be the way to solve renewable energy’s intermittency problems at a fraction of the cost of what widespread stationary battery use would cost.
That’s what a report by two writers at the National Resources Defense Council discuss in a fascinating article at the Microgrid Knowledge website. As usual, California is the overriding example of a state that could do it absolutely right.
As the authors write:
A study recently published by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) shows that the electric vehicles (EVs) expected in California in 2025 could be used to meet the majority of the Golden State’s energy storage mandate that calls for 1.3 gigawatts (GW) of battery capacity by 2024.
The keys from the Berkeley paper are as follows:
Let’s sum up the findings from the paper on how the expected number of California EVs can help to ensure grid stability and fulfill the intent of the storage mandate:
- Without hindering drivers’ transportation needs, smart charging or V1G can easily provide 1 GW of storage, or about three-quarters of the 2024 storage mandate.
- V1G and V2G combined can offer an astounding 5 GW of storage, dwarfing the storage mandate, and enabling the integration of much higher quantities of renewable energy.
- Crucially, while V1G may require a system-wide investment of around $150 million, that’s substantially less than the $1.45-$1.75 billion that equivalent stationary (non-EV) storage would cost. (The paper used stationary storage costs from 2015, the latest available at the time of its writing, but even with the substantially lower storage costs of today, V1G implementation remains far cheaper.)
- Using a similar approach, the value of grid services associated with V2G in addressing the “duck curve” is equivalent to $12.8 to $15.4 billion in equivalent stationary storage.
In other words, Tony Seba could well be right when he said at Intersolar North America that if we just electrify everything, we can stabilize the grid and meet 100% of our electrical needs from renewable energy in the next thirty years.
Sorry, President Trump – those are just the facts
More:
Study: Using EVs Instead of Stationary Batteries Could Save Billions