https://piped.video/watch?v=YyzQsVzKylE
Lithium batteries scale power and capacity at the same time. Flow batteries can scale power and capacity independently.
The advantage of flow batteries is that they can have enormous capacities without the added cost of upgrading the power, making it ideal for grid scale storage.
Even if this new flow battery reaches the energy density of a lithium battery, and can output sufficient power, it would still need to reach price parity to be competitive.
The current cost to drive a car with green hydrogen from electrolysis (not blue or grey hydrogen from methane reforming) is roughly equivalent to $50/L (AUD) for petrol, or $120/Gal (USD) for gas. This is one of the reasons most hydrogen today is made from fossil fuels.
What projection is this?
The learning curve is not as bad as it used to be. Almost everything can be done through the GUI, many tutorials exist, and steam will run almost any game without tinkering with it. ProtonDB is your friend.
Historically, electric cars have caught fire much less often than petrol cars (even accounting for the lower number of EV's on the road). Most of these have been from a single battery manufacturing line and caused by a single misaligned robot that placed the battery terminals too close together. These batteries have all been recalled under warranty.
There are battery types that are better for grid storage than hydrogen. One of the main drawbacks of hydrogen storage is its low round trip efficiency of around 30%.
Redox flow batteries are easily scalable, liquid metal batteries have very low maintenance costs and long lifespans, and sodium ion batteries are much cheaper than lithium ion batteries. It will be interesting to see if any of these options make mass market.
Car batteries last more than 10 years in cars, have a second life as static storage for likely much more than 10 years, and we currently have the ability to recycle over 95% of battery materials into new batteries.
Hydrogen used in fuel cells has a round trip efficiency of around 30% (compared to 90%+ for batteries). If the hydrogen was generated from solar power, we would need 3 times as many solar panels to drive hydrogen cars vs battery cars.
Most (98%+) of all hydrogen is currently made using fossil fuels. The most common method is methane steam reformation. The methane (natural gas) is combined with high pressure, high temperature steam. The methane reacts with the steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide is usually vented to the atmosphere (some places capture the CO2, and use it to pump oil out of the ground where the CO2 is also released into the atmosphere).
The hydrogen also contains less energy than the methane that was used to make it.
If every car was instantly converted to electric, the grid would struggle but not collapse. There is a lot of extra (but more expensive) production capability on the grid, and EV's are being added gradually, not instantly.
The grid is currently being upgraded to support air conditioners and heat pumps. EV charging can be scheduled for times when the grid is under less load, so EV's will have a relatively small impact on the grid.
TL:DR: The grid will be fine.
We have 2 compatible cars. A 2018 Nissan Leaf ZE1 e+ with 62kWh battery, and a 2014 Nissan Leaf ZE0 with 24kWh battery (both Japanese imports). These are total battery sizes, so the usable capacity is lower. The ZE1 seems to be about 50kWh usable, and the ZE0 about 16kWh.
The V2G charger we got is the Wallbox Quasar. It reached end of production in July 2022, and was first approved for use in South Australia in December 2022, 6 months after production ended. I had been contacting everyone I could find to get one, and I was very surprised when JetCharge got back to me a few months later asking if I still wanted one. It took a few weeks to sort out paperwork and logistics, and about a day to install. The unit was about $10,000 and the installation about $5,000 for a total of $15,000.
The Quasar does what it says on the box, but I now understand why Wallbox decided to end production in favour of a new (as yet unfinished) model. The Quasar 1 does not support V2H (at least not well). It has a minimum charge/discharge rate of 6A (1.4kW) so a separate house battery is needed to fill the gap if the house is using less than 1.4kW and you don't want to import or export power to the grid.
It also doesn't have the ability to run during a grid outage. We have a house battery with off-grid capabilities, but we can't legally have the Quasar on the backup circuits because of its ability to overload the house battery. (The same reason the AC and stove are not on the backup circuits).
Both of these issues will likely be fixed on the Quasar 2. The Quasar 2 will be released first as a CCS only model (not compatible with the Leaf), and a CHAdeMO version might be released a year or 2 later, but Wallbox has not confirmed anything yet.
So far I'm happy with the system. It's definitely not for everyone, and needs constant attention to get any benefit from it.
We are currently getting wholesale electricity prices from Amber. Most days we roughly break even on cost, but occasionally the prices spike from 20c/kWh to over $10/kWh. This only happens once or twice a month, but we make more in those days than we pay for the entire month for electricity.
The house battery (10kWh) can export for up to 2 hours, and the car (50kWh) can theoretically export for 10 hours. In practice, the car won't export below 20% (I'm assuming this is a limit in the car, not the Quasar), and it often isn't charged above 80%. This still leaves 30kWh which can last for up to 6 hours at maximum export rate. This is more than enough to cover any possible price spikes, and run the house overnight. The price spikes rarely last more than an hour.
Amber provides some automation for the house battery - importing when prices are low, and exporting when prices are high. They are looking into providing a similar type of automation for V2G. Having to manually set the V2G charger to export during high prices is a nuisance, and without the price push notifications from Amber, we would miss many opportunities to sell to the grid.
The Wallbox app is designed for all Wallbox chargers, and the V2G features seem to have been added as an afterthought. I have encountered several bugs so far, and several design decisions that I don't agree with. Schedules can be set in the app for charging and discharging, but there are bugs with this too. I'm hoping that most of these issues will be fixed before V2G becomes mainstream.
We have a unique situation here. A house with 10kW of solar, a V2G compatible car that's home most of the time, a house battery, and wholesale electricity prices. V2G works really well for us, and I regret nothing. Without these things however, V2G probably wouldn't be worth the current upfront cost.
I have a 2011 Nissan Leaf AZE0 24kWh with about 40% battery degradation. It can drive about 80km (50mi), which is perfectly adequate for a second car. It is rarely driven more than 20km in a day.
My other car is a 2018 Nissan Leaf ZE1 E+ G 62kWh with about 4% battery degradation.
The fastest battery degradation happens when the battery is new, and the degradation slows down gradually over time. I expect the 2011 Leaf to still have at least 50km range in 2041, and the 2018 Leaf to still have at least 200km (130mi) range in 2038. Both of these will still suit my needs.
There are some browser extensions that can do this for you.
Old Reddit Redirect is one I found with a quick search. Also available for Firefox. (I can't remember which extension I use)
I was trying to call someone an idiot, but I only had a calculator on hand. I also didn't consider talking as an option.
You can always try Linux risk free in a virtual machine like VirtualBox.
If you like what you see, and you have any valuable data backed-up, you can try dual booting. That way you get to use Linux as your primary operating system, but can switch back and forth as much as needed.
I found I was dual booting Windows and Linux for over 3 years before I was comfortable enough to stop using Windows entirely. Switching to Linux doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing approach. You can take it as slow as you want.