REUSING OLD ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERIES FOR GRID-SCALE STORAGE

As more EVs will be used in the future, a problem will arise what to do with the old batteries. Some folks say they can be reused for grid-scale storage to provide electricity, such as during multi-day wind and solar lulls, which in New England occur at random anytime of the year.

 

The old EV batteries would come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They would have to be arranged in buildings and kept at about 70F for best performance. Older batteries have more in and out resistance and do not hold as much charge.

 

It would be useful to see just how many batteries, and how much electricity storage, GWh, as DC, would be required. Would they fit in a Wal*Mart-size building, or would many such buildings be required?

Future Heat Pumps and EVs: In 2035, electricity fed to the NE grid would be much higher, due to heat pumps, each of them using about 2000 kWh/y, and EVs, each of them using about 3500 kWh/y, for a total of 5500 kWh/y, as measured at the wall meter/charging station. Currently, a typical NE household, without a heat pump and EV, uses about 6000 kWh/y.

 

It appears NE would need quite a lot more grid, and millions of private/public charging stations, and a lot of deep retrofitting of residential buildings and other buildings to accomplish the switch from gasoline/fuel oil to electricity.

 

CO2 Emission Reductions: The rearranging of infrastructures would require at billions of dollars per year, and would have associated with it a lot of CO2 emissions, and would take at least 30 years.

 

The CO2 reduction of EVs likely would be minimal on a lifetime, source-to-decommissioning basis, even if the NE grid, which is one of the cleanest in the US, gets even “cleaner”.

 

Closing near-CO2-free nuclear plants and replacing them with wind and solar plants and much more grid would not make the NE grid cleaner, but certainly would cause it to produce more expensive electricity. See URLs.

Reusing Old EV Batteries for Grid-Scale Storage in New England

 

In 2035, the load on the NE grid would be as shown in the table. See URL.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-demand-and-low-win...

 

Table 1/Fed to high voltage grid

2018

2018

2018

2035

2035

2035

TWh

TWh/d

%

TWh

TWh/d

%

Fossil

52.781

0.145

42.680

52.781

0.145

33.01

Gas

50.511

0.138

40.844

50.511

0.138

31.59

Oil

1.161

0.003

0.939

1.161

0.003

0.73

Coal

1.109

0.003

0.897

1.109

0.003

0.69

Nuclear

31.385

0.086

25.379

0.000

0.000

0.00

Renewables

10.788

0.030

8.723

63.844

0.175

39.93

- Wind

3.367

0.009

2.723

26.959

0.074

19.36

- Refuse

3.018

0.008

2.440

4.000

0.011

2.50

- Wood

2.698

0.007

2.182

3.000

0.008

1.88

- ATM Solar

1.212

0.003

0.980

8.519

0.023

5.33

- Landfill methane

0.448

0.001

0.362

0.650

0.002

0.41

- Farm, etc., methane

0.045

0.000

0.036

0.100

0.000

0.06

Other

0.400

0.001

0.323

0.500

0.001

0.31

NE Hydro

8.708

0.024

7.041

10.000

0.027

6.25

Imported H-Q hydro via tielines

21.409

0.059

17.312

34.750

0.095

21.74

Pumping loss

-1.804

-0.005

-1.459

-2.000

-0.005

-1.25

Total to high voltage grid

123.667

0.339

100.000

139.259

0.382

100.00

BTM solar fed to distribution grids

2.162

0.006

9.013

0.025

Additional energy efficiency

10.000

0.027

Total net load on NE grid

121.505

120.246

0.329

If wind and solar were assumed to be 15% of annual averages during a multi-day summer lull, about 0.15 x (26.959, wind + 8.519, ATM solar + 9.013, BTM solar) = 6.674 TWh/y would be present, or 0.018 TWh/d, instead of an annual average of 44.491 TWh/y, or 0.122 TWh/d, for a deficit of 0.122 - 0.018 = 0.104 TWh/d. See URL.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-demand-and-low-win...

 

Assume 30% of the 0.104 TWh/d deficit were to be made up by used EV batteries, the rest by other sources.

If each EV battery supplied 20 kWh as AC to the grid, about 1.55 million EV batteries would be required to take care of Day 1 of a 6-day lull.

Now the batteries are empty, the wind/solar lull is ongoing.

More electricity from other sources would be required, or an additional 1.55 x 5 = 7.75 million batteries!

 

Battery total deliverable capacity (for one day) would be 1.55 million x 20 kWh = 0.0311 TWh, or 31,100 MWh, equivalent to about 31100/129 = 242 Hornsdales on at least 2500 acres for one day of lull storage. See note.

 

It likely would take at least 20 years to have that many used 15-y-old batteries in New England by about 2040.

 

NOTE: The Hornsdale Power Reserve, HPR, battery system, 100 MW/129 MWh, in Australia, located on a 10-acre site, was the largest battery in the world in 2017.

Table 2/Year

2035

Wind generation, TWh

26.959

Solar generation, ATM

8.519

Solar generation, BTM

9.013

Total generation, TWh/y

44.491

d/y

365

Total generation, TWh/d

0.122

Wind/solar lull fraction, assumed

0.15

Generation during lull, TWh/y

6.674

d/y

365

Generation during lull, TWh/d

0.018

.

Generation deficit due to lull, TWh/d

0.104

Battery discharge fraction, assumed

0.3

Electricity from batteries, TWh/d

0.0311

Electricity from batteries, kWh/d

31,082,753

Electricity from one battery, kWh, as AC

20

Batteries required for one day of electricity

1,554,138

Batteries required for one day of electricity, million

1.55

Battery Round-trip Loss

 

Battery Round-trip Loss, A to Z basis

 

At least 25 kWh/battery would need to be fed to the New England HV grid by traditional and wind and solar generators, which after T&D loss, step-down losses (to 4000 V and then to 220 V), would arrive at user meters for feeding into storage batteries.

What is left would need conversion from AC to DC, before feeding into the battery, another loss.

What is left, less battery resistance loss and vampire losses, would be stored in the car battery. See note.

 

NOTE: A battery slowly leaks part of its charge, whether in use or not, plus EVs use electricity for various vehicle systems while parked, idling or driven. It is called vampire loss. Those losses are separate from the electricity required to go from A to B.

 

When the EV battery is discharging, even less would leave the battery, due to various resistances

What is left would need conversion from DC to AC, before feeding into the grid, another loss.

What is left would need to be stepped up to distribution grid voltage (usually 4000V, then maybe also to high voltage, usually 100,000V), another loss. 

About 18 - 20 kWh/battery would be left for feeding into the grid, if called upon to do so, for an overall loss of about 20% - 23%

The A to Z loss of at least 5 - 7 kWh/battery would require additional wind and solar systems to make up. See table 2.

 

EV Charging/Vampire Loss Factors

 

If about 20 kWh of AC were used to charge an EV, as measured by the wall meter, there would be an AC to DC loss and charging/vampire loss; about a 30.0% loss in case of a Tesla Model S (upstate New York), or a 25.7% loss, in case of the Tesla Model 3 (southern California), wall meter to “in battery" basis. These factors were determined based on one-year long road tests.

 

NOTE: Any EPA values regarding EV charging loss, determined in a laboratory, do not account for longer-term vampire losses and weather/road conditions. See URLs.

 

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/ifo-institute-study-cas...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/comparison-of-tesla-mod...

APPENDIX 1

Electricity Mix Based on Power Purchase Agreements: There are non-technical people talking about the “Vermont electricity mix” or the “New Hampshire electricity mix”. That mix exists only on paper, because it is based on power purchase agreements, PPAs, between utilities and owners of electricity generators. A utility may claim it is 100% renewable. This means the utility has PPAs with owners of renewable generators, i.e. wind, solar, biomass, hydro, etc. That mix has nothing to do with physical reality.

 

Electricity Mix Based on Physical Reality: Once electricity is fed into the NE electric grid by any generator, it travels:

 

- On un-insulated wires, as electromagnetic waves, EM, at somewhat less than the speed of light, i.e. from northern Maine to southern Florida, about 1800 miles in 0.01 of a second, per College Physics 101.

- On insulated wires, the speed decreases to as low as 2/3 the speed of light, depending on the application.

 

If those speeds were not that high, the NE electric grid would not work, and modern electronics would not work.

 

The electrons vibrate at 60 cycles per second, 60 Hz, and travel at less than 0.1 inch/second; the reason it takes so long to charge a battery.

 

It is unfortunate most high school teachers told students the electrons were traveling.

Teachers likely never told them about EM waves, or did not know it themselves.

http://www.djtelectricaltraining.co.uk/downloads/50Hz-Frequency.pdf

 

This article explains in detail what happens when electricity is fed to the grid.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/popular-misconceptions-...

 

NOTE: If you live off the grid, have your own PV system, batteries, and generator for shortages and emergencies, then you can say I use my own electricity mix. If you are connected to the GMP grid, which is connected to the NE grid, and draw from any socket, then you draw the NE mix.

APPENDIX 2

EV Lifetime CO2 due to Energy of Operations and Energy Embodied in Infrastructures

 

Some people make the claim EVs have zero CO2 emissions. Sometimes they add “from the tailpipe”, even though an EV does not have a tailpipe. Oh, well. If we look at CO2 emissions on a lifetime basis, an entirely different picture emerges. 

Regarding CO2 emissions from operations, there are four phases:

a) Electricity generation phase. CO2 due to:

 

- Materials extraction, processing, storage, transport of various fuels fed into power plants,

- Combustion of various fuels

b) Pre-driving phase. CO2 due to:

 

- Vehicle and battery production, including materials extraction, processing, storage, transport to battery pack and vehicle manufacturing/assembly plants,

- Transport of finished vehicles to user.


c) Driving phase. CO2 due to:

 

In case of a plug-in hybrid vehicle, 1) upstream (fossil fuel extraction, processing, transport) and combustion, 2) grid electricity, from mine/well/fracking source to user meter.

 

In case of an electric vehicle, CO2 due to grid electricity, from mine/well/fracking source to user meter.

d) Disposal phase: CO2 due to:

- Vehicle and battery end-of-life disposal processing/landfill.


http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/ifo-institute-study-cas...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/lifecycle-co2eq-of-inte...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-more-wind-and-solar...

NOTE:

- The upstream CO2 of NG is about 17% of NG combustion CO2.

https://ceic.tepper.cmu.edu/-/media/files/tepper/centers/ceic/publi...

 

- The upstream CO2 of LNG is about 43% of NG combustion CO2.

http://www.igu.org/sites/default/files/node-page-field_file/LNGLife...

 

The EU may use different values.

- The upstream CO2 of E10 (90% gasoline/10% ethanol) is about 23.76% of combustion CO2; pure gasoline about 25%, per US EPA.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/replacing-gasoline-cons...

 

EV Lifetime CO2 due to Energy Embodied in Infrastructures

 

Here are just two of the many infrastructures required to create and support EVs.

 

1) Lithium Infrastructure: Go to the URL at the top of the article to watch the video in the original articleregarding Chile in South America, which has one of the largest lithium deposits in the world. The video shows the enormous environmental damage inflicted on Chile by at least one thousand square kilometers of evaporation ponds, due to the present level of lithium-ion battery use for various purposes, including EV vehicles. Expanding worldwide EV production with Li-ion batteries would expand that pond area by at least 100 times.

 

2) LNG Infrastructure: Regarding using LNG for LDVs (one of the options in the above article) that would require a vast new infrastructure of NG pipelines to specialized sending harbors with NG process plants, NG to LNG liquefaction plants, LNG storage, specialized LNG tankers (some of them with ice-braking hulls), specialized receiving harbors, LNG storage, LNG trucking to distribute LNG to users, and/or LNG to NG regasifying plants and NG pipelines from those plants to connect to existing NG pipelines.

 

Here are some data regarding just one part of the costly infrastructure chain for LNG: 

 

- Yamal LNG; operated by Yamal LNG company; owned by Russian independent gas producer Novatek (50.1%), Total, a French company (20%), CNPC (20%) and Silk Road Fund (9.9%); capital cost $27 billion; capacity 16.5 million mt LNG, 3 trains. 

 

- Yamal LNG 2: operated by Yamal LNG company; owned by Novatek (60%), Total (20%); Others (20%); capital cost $25.5 billion; capacity 19.8 million mt LNG, 3 trains.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/56f19604-fd6d-11e7-a492-2c9be7f3120a

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-14/russia-dreams-bi...

https://www.total.com/en/media/news/press-releases/yamal-lng-projec...

 

Summary Table of CO2

 

The values in the table 1 are based on:

 

- A driving distance of 150,000 km (or 150,000/1.60934 = 93,206 miles) during the 15 years of a vehicle’s life,

- Using E10 (10% ethanol/90% gasoline blend),

- Electric grid CO2 intensity of 500 g CO2/kWh, (or 500/454 = 1.101 lb CO2/kWh), on a “fed to grid” basis. See URL.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/comparison-of-energy-ef...

Comments on Table 3

-The embodied CO2 of several vehicles (battery and vehicle only), as a percent of the lifecycle emissions, in metric ton, are shown in below table.

- The embodied CO2 of infrastructures is not included

- CO2 estimates of the Toyota Prius, Toyota plug-in Prius and Tesla Model S were inserted for comparison purposes.

See URL and click on press release.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/06/full-life-cycle-assesment-elect...

 

Table 3/Vehicle

Embodied

Driving, etc.

Lifecycle

 

CO2, Mt

CO2, Mt

CO2, Mt

Average E10 vehicle

 5.6 (23%)

18.4

24.0

Average hybrid

6.5 (31%)

14.5

21.0

Hybrid, Prius

6.5 (31%)

12.0

18.5

Average plug-in hybrid

6.7 (35%)

12.3

19.0

Plug-in hybrid, Prius

6.7 (35%)

10.0

16.7

EV, medium-size battery

 8.8 (46%)

10.2

19.0

EV, Tesla Model S, 100 kWh

11.5 (60%)

10.4

21.9

APPENDIX 3

Electric Power Sector CO2 Emissions

 

https://eidclimate.org/draft-epa-report-shows-decreasing-greenhouse...

https://rhg.com/research/preliminary-us-emissions-estimates-for-2018/

 

The greenhouse gas inventory, GHGI, data show US electric power sector CO2 emissions continue to decrease – a trend that has been widely attributed to the increased use of natural gas in electricity generation.

 

In fact, a 2018 EIA report found increased natural gas consumption and decreased coal consumption can be credited for 61 percent of the total 3.86 billion metric tons of the power sector CO2 reductions since 2005.

 

Electric power sector CO2 emissions have been reduced 4.8 percent since 1990, 27.8 percent since 2005 and 4.3 percent since 2016, according to the GHGI.

Because of booming economic growth in 2018, electricity generation increased about 4%, but CO2eq increased only about 2%. As a result, the US grid CO2eq intensity decreased; the grid is getting “cleaner”. See table 4.

 

Table 4/US

1990

2005

2015

2016

2017

2018

US Electric Power System

 

 

 

 

 

 

Electricity, TWh

4078

4077

4034

4178

CO2eq emissions, million metric ton

1820.8

2400.9

1803

1811.2

1744

1778

CO2eq, g/kWh

442

444

432

426

NE Electric Power System

 

 

 

 

 

 

CO2eq, g/kWh

 

 

 

322

309

 

 

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Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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