A sibling comment mentions (but maybe doesn't realize the importance of) what battery storage is primarily useful for: night power. Solar is cheap and easy for power when the sun is up, but doesn't exist when the sun sets. The "evening commute" is mostly during the time when the sun is up; where you run into issues is:
1. After the evening commute in the early hours of the night, people are still awake at home using energy.
2. Homes are less efficient than offices + schools for many reasons (human density is generally more power efficient than everyone being spread out and not sharing resources), so demand goes up.
3. And that demand goes up precisely as supply — due to sunset — goes down.
In that light, EVs are actually great for energy storage, assuming you get appropriate compensation from the utility companies for the cost of battery degradation — which also could be in the form of "demand pricing" where it's cheaper if you don't draw power from the grid at certain times. They are available for use right when there's a supply problem: early in the night. And then you could schedule them to recharge when demand drops late at night and the grid has excess power... Or, as more charging infrastructure gets built, you could also charge while at work and the sun is up.
In some places there might be parts of the year where you still face a supply issue with solar: if the sun regularly sets before 5pm for part of the year, you'll still face some supply issues (although at least only when people are crowded in offices and schools, so demand is lower).
California has hourly graphing of electricity demand vs supply, which is quite useful: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx You'll notice that while demand begins to climb at around 4pm, it's still fairly low at 5pm, and really only peaks at 7:30-8pm. By midnight demand has bottomed out again, which is a great time to have your car schedule charging time, leaving you with plenty of juice for the morning commute — a standard US dryer outlet will charge a Model 3 at about 30 miles per hour; assuming you leave at 8am that's 240 miles of range, so even if you ran it to zero — and probably you should not do that and only run it to 20%! — just about anyone would be be to make it into their workplace, since the average American round-trip commute distance is less than 50 miles.
> The "evening commute" is mostly during the time when the sun is up
I admittedly live on the eastern edge of my time zone (Boston), but my evening commute is fully past any meaningful solar production for almost half the year (solar is producing under 25% for ~14 hours per day on a year-round basis, more in winter).
As we continue to electrify space heating, more electricity will be demanded on winter overnights (when you lose solar PV but also have increased building net heat loss).
To me, this points towards “use nuclear for base load, dummies…”
Yeah, Boston is not great for local solar production IMO. Def agreed on using nuclear for base load, especially there (but also in general). That being said, solar is great and cheap for other places, like CA! So it'll just vary regionally I'd bet.
A standard US dryer outlet is rated for 30 amps at 240v. For a sustained rating of 80% that's 5760 watts, which at 4 miles per kwh is 23 miles per hour, not 30.
Frankly it would take a hell of a lot to convince people to be ok with getting home, plugging their car in, and having the charge level go down instead of up. I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with it.
Imagine you get home, plug your car in, the car runs your home heating for the remainder of the evening for free, then you go to sleep and the car recharges for cheap. Sounds like an attractive proposal?
Because I might have to go somewhere without hours of notice. Maybe I need to go somewhere I can't leave the car plugged in. Maybe I'll get stuck in a traffic jam. Maybe I'll have to drive to a hospital a hundred miles away, as has happened before.
I might sign up for this if my household kept at least one ICE vehicle, but not otherwise.
1. After the evening commute in the early hours of the night, people are still awake at home using energy.
2. Homes are less efficient than offices + schools for many reasons (human density is generally more power efficient than everyone being spread out and not sharing resources), so demand goes up.
3. And that demand goes up precisely as supply — due to sunset — goes down.
In that light, EVs are actually great for energy storage, assuming you get appropriate compensation from the utility companies for the cost of battery degradation — which also could be in the form of "demand pricing" where it's cheaper if you don't draw power from the grid at certain times. They are available for use right when there's a supply problem: early in the night. And then you could schedule them to recharge when demand drops late at night and the grid has excess power... Or, as more charging infrastructure gets built, you could also charge while at work and the sun is up.
In some places there might be parts of the year where you still face a supply issue with solar: if the sun regularly sets before 5pm for part of the year, you'll still face some supply issues (although at least only when people are crowded in offices and schools, so demand is lower).
California has hourly graphing of electricity demand vs supply, which is quite useful: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx You'll notice that while demand begins to climb at around 4pm, it's still fairly low at 5pm, and really only peaks at 7:30-8pm. By midnight demand has bottomed out again, which is a great time to have your car schedule charging time, leaving you with plenty of juice for the morning commute — a standard US dryer outlet will charge a Model 3 at about 30 miles per hour; assuming you leave at 8am that's 240 miles of range, so even if you ran it to zero — and probably you should not do that and only run it to 20%! — just about anyone would be be to make it into their workplace, since the average American round-trip commute distance is less than 50 miles.