WIND WILL PAY YOU TO CHARGE YOUR EV

Future May Involve Getting Paid to Charge Your Plug-in Vehicle
Joanna Schroeder, October 30, 2009 (Gas 2.0 via Reuters)

"…In West Texas and Illinois, electric customers are being paid to use electricity. With the growth of wind energy in areas like Texas, Iowa and Minnesota, electric companies are occasionally producing more energy-especially during off-peak hours-than they can use. Why not store it you ask? Because there are not yet any good ways to store energy…[T]he oversupply of electricity has forced prices into the negative range. The result: some customers are paid to use electricity.

"…[P]lug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs, BEVs, EREVs, etc.) can take advantage of the extra electricity during off hours. The first upside is that you may get paid to charge your plug-in…The second advantage is that much of the electricity generated at night is from wind…[which means using less] coal, a thorn in the side of the electric vehicle industry."

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"…Wind turbine owners collect a production tax credit of 2.1 cents per kilowatt hour when they are producing electricity…[T]hey don't want to shut down the turbines so they'd rather pay customers a "fee" that is less than the subsidy to consumer power…This is an example of passing along a subsidy to help lower energy costs for consumers…[T]his program is not sustainable…[But] until our government decides to rid itself of ALL subsidies (including coal, oil, renewable energy, agriculture, etc.) our other option is to finally create an economically feasible way to store energy.

"…Along with the energy start-up company Energy Storage & Power, the city has their eye on developing a [Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES)] storage plant for the price tag of $250 million. Expensive but less costly than traditional gas plants. The technology works in that primarily using wind energy, compressed air is pumped into an underground reservoir during off-peak hours and then released during peak hours providing electricity. The proposed plant would provide an output capacity of 300 mega-watts, similar to a mid-sized power plant producing electricity for 10 hours…[I]t will take five years to complete the project."

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"The CAES technology is being designed to…help match supply and demand on the electricity grid and serve as a go-between for producers and users…[I]t enables the storage of alternative energy such as solar or wind, until it is needed during peak times…[C]ompressed air energy storage costs far less and lasts far longer than the alternatives, including batteries, pumped hydro, flywheels, magnetic storage or supercapacitors…[and] batteries in the PHEVs could also become a source of storage…making the car owners day traders of electricity. The trader would store the electricity in his PHEV battery at night and then sell it back during daytime peak hours…[This] would require a smart grid, but we're well on our way towards that…

"…[A]nother option: wind generation forecasting. Weather Services International (WSI) in conjunction with Genescape have launched WindCast IQ, the first wind generation forecasting service designed for energy traders. The increase in wind power in some areas has caused congestion and price volatility…[T]he solution is WindCastIQ, which gives clients highly accurate hourly forecasts for up to 7 days of wind generation at the ISO-level, regional and wind farm level…"