I can't see the article as it's subscription only but presumably this would be an opt-in arrangement but perhaps with financial incentives to encourage people. I wouldn't want to go out to my EV in the morning and find the Grid had taken quite a slice of my charge if I had a long journey.

I posted what is in essence the gist of the article. and your comment is in line with some of the more polite comments in the newspaper.

One small flaw. If your EV does not do V2L vehicle to load then backflowing power is not technically feasible. Very few do this yet. Mine certainly don't. Plus that's why I did not install a smart charger. I installed a dumb charger. Nobody who isn't physically standing next to it, can affect it.

Edited by Ethan Edwards on 10/02/2022 at 22:30

Yes they will in theory. I imagine the ideal users for this plan would be the many people who only do a low mileage, so the battery would not be unduly stressed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are 4 Teslas very near me all of which spend most of their time parked up on the drive. There is one in the next road which seems to be permanently parked behind what is obviously their daily driver.

Assume I have an EV.

I would happily sell my car battery capacity to the National Grid for (say) 30p a unit at 17.00, then recharge the battery at 03.00 for 5p a unit.

Most days I don't need the range unless I have particular plans. Occasionally I may want to ensure full range the following morning, the demand on the grid is high due to cold weather, so I pay a premium price to charge.

That a system needs to be introduced gradually with a limited number of users makes sense - it means issues arising (there will be some) can be sorted before the big rollout starts.

If you don't like the idea, have an EV, simply plug in to recharge when you get home from work at 17.00-19.00 and pay a premium price to charge. Your choice!!

Do you really think that you are going to be offered 30p a unit to supply the national grid from your car battery and then charge it up at 3pm for 5 p a unit?

I suggest that the smart meter will be programmed to remember the cost per unit that you paid to charge the battery the last time and you will be offered a small margin such as 25% on that cost.

And that's before HMRC get their sticky fingers on the profit you make!

I would want to know how the lifetime of my battery would be affected by the additional discharge/charge cycles.

Doubt it will affect them when the time comes as battery tech is improving to the point they will all last 10 years + without worries of battery degradation no matter charge/discharge cycles, and with motor tech improving they should be able to get 1000 miles out of a charge -eventually- imo

National Grid setting up an experiment with Octopus energy with at present some 135 EV owners signed up to get a rebate of some 60p per hour. Well I hope the experiment is well insured as batteries are very expensive.

The thought of the National Grid acting as Count Dracula sucking your battery dry is frightening and the Grid is being very selfish expecting EV owners to cover their short comings. In winter with High pressure around for a week or more EV owners will be going nowhere . Great idea though but how you would check prices offered and for how long is something else. Difficult when you cannot see electric physically disappearing from your car. Are EV car owners going to get more favourable tariffs than the rest of us?

If it were my car I would leave it unplugged when charged. The rates for electricity units bought for your car are still way up in the air and this is simply another reason why I would not consider EV at present

Is this draining and recharging of batteries going to hurt the battery life?

Yes. Batteries might do c. 1000 cycles before their capacity has dropped by say 20-25%. If the grid borrows half a battery full and puts it back, then that's half a cycle used up.

You also need them to send you more electricity back up the pipe than they drained down it, because charging is not 100% efficient. And to my mind they should pay you the market rate when demand is high, and charge you the lower market rate for recharging when demand has dropped so you should make a profit on it.

Looking at the big picture it's obviously a good idea to use the EV storage because storage is the big problem when the sun isn't shining, there's no wind, and the generating capacity just isn't there to meet demand. Big enough batteries and pumped hydro for the sort of capacity needed are not feasible AFAIK.