Published

1 year ago

December 30, 2024

Alice Rush

Here’s an article on the use of EVs as a tool to power our homes and/or send electricity back to the grid. My comments are in italics.

A study by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute shows how electric vehicles (EVs) could double as home storage batteries using bidirectional charging. Yes, this is called “vehicle-to-grid,” aka “V2G.”

It was an interesting concept in the 2000-aughts but has gone essentially nowhere over the last two decades, largely because amount of electrical energy in an EV’s battery is not worth the inconvenience and the cost of the vast amount of technology necessary to make all his happen.

Also, let’s suppose that an EV owner wants to commit to having a certain number of kWhrs taken from his battery every day at a given time, but his plans change, he needs to use his car for some purpose that he couldn’t have foreseen, and now he’s stranded. That’s not an appealing deal.

Most EVs in Germany are driven for just 1 hour daily, leaving 23 hours of idle time. During this downtime, EVs could stabilize energy grids by storing and sharing power when demand peaks.

The amount of time EVs are not driven is totally irrelevant to this discussion.

This strategy could boost solar and wind energy use, as EVs could store excess daytime energy and release it at night.

Sorry, but no. Part of the reason that V2G will never be implemented is that it would have an infinitesimal impact on our grid-mix, while coming along with a huge price tag.

For individual EV owners, this could mean annual savings of €31 to €780 by sharing stored energy with their home or the grid.

Doubtless, if an individual EV owner wants to make this investment, there will some return. €31/year is less than $0.09 per day. That doesn’t sound too motivating to me, but maybe I’m just a hard sell.

BTW, I can’t find this “study.” I’m thinking that, if it exists at all, it was written about 20 years ago, when this subject was actually under consideration.

Vehicle-to-Grid

Renewable Energy

Ask a Pro

Published

12 hours ago

June 13, 2026

Alice Rush

I’m not a financial pro, but here’s some advice:

Don’t live on a budget. Make a lot of money and live far beneath your means. What value does luxury actually bring to your life, especially if it makes you nervous about running out of cash?

As I told my kids when they were growing up, “Unless you’re completely shallow, showing off your money is an idiotic thing to do. You make false friends and have people glomming onto you to sell you stuff you really don’t need.”

Warren Buffett still lives in a modest house in Nebraska, a state in which he could buy an entire country. Maybe there is something about him and his values that could benefit you.

Ask a Pro

Renewable Energy

Solar PV in Spain

Published

1 day ago

June 12, 2026

Alice Rush

I see.

There’s not enough land in Spain to support rooftop and ground-mounted solar at a fraction of the cost.

LOL.

Solar PV in Spain

Renewable Energy

What’s Wrong with Human Civilization?

Published

2 days ago

June 12, 2026

Alice Rush

It’s possible that right now, there are other civilizations observing the human race, studying us from afar, and noticing our decline into savagery and eventual extinction by turning billionaires into trillionaires.

People say that the principal weakness of human beings is that we can’t plan for the future as a species. Dogs are arguably even worse, though they aren’t consumed with greed. They don’t plot the starvation of millions of other dogs so they themselves can have enough food to last a billion years.

As an elderly man, I’ll be leaving this planet soon, but I won’t cease pondering this until my heart stops beating.