E V Owners to Get Cash Back for Selling Power to the Electric Grid in Denmark (~$10,000

You could be right, but without something besides the assertion, it seems more like a crank-yanker than any sort of informed opinion.

I'd be interested in hearing your reasons for your thought.

Why would a utility need to pay $10,000 for the use of someone's remote car battery over the life of a car
when for less than that $10,000 the utility could buy their own batteries.

I tried searching for a breakdown of their $10,000 figure but I haven't found how they got it yet.

I'll keep searching and will comment further if I find more info.

Also realize that car batteries have a limited number of charge/discharge cycles, and each time you go
through a cycle you reduce the remaining life of the battery. So any amount you are paid would have to be
compared against the cost of your battery's life reduction.

The number is probably realistic if it is from Willett Kempton, he is a very careful researcher. There are a lot of things about buying and selling electricity for grid operations that you'd need to know to have a full appreciation of why it works out for the utility, but it does. The last I heard it was about $3000/year here in the US, so I wasn't too surprised to see the 10K for electricity at Denmarks prices, where they tax their energy heavily.

As for the battery, yes there is wear and tear, but the new lithium batteries for EVs are very durable, and the process is designed to not drain the battery, which is an important part of extending the longevity.

This is Willett's website, if you'd like to read some of his papers on the topic.
http://www.udel.edu/V2G/

they will pay for themselves.

Where does the energy come from that was available in the EV battery to begin with and do I have to pay more than $10k to keep the battery topped up so the power company can tap it?

Ponzi scheme anyone?

http://www.udel.edu/V2G/page7/page3/page3.html

Try reading the last, and the third from the last papers. Start with the third from the last, Kempton & Dhanju.

...or even what it means, do you?

If there is no value added there is generally little that can be done to sell something for more than you paid for it. Often the value is simply in distribution so it may not be readily apparent - but it is there. The papers outline clearly what the value added in the case of V2G is; if you don't "accept" it, that is your problem.

Everyone knows that "buy low, sell high" is the most common advice given when someone asks for a stock tip. In this context, buying low and selling high adds nothing to the value. But then, value is about perception, isn't it?

I hope that treating others as mental deficients is helping boost your perceived credibility. Considering the large number of exchanges in multiple threads where you "educate" those who don't see the light, I seriously doubt that.

I gave you references to original research papers that *fully explained* the nature of V2G including the economics of the process for all parties involved. You prefer to play a game of stupid. No one is forcing you to remain in ignorance, that is your choice.

You bring to mind an old ditty my father would recite from his childhood long ago and far away...

You give them books and send them to school; they stand on the books and screw the mule.

On The Cover/Top Stories

A Light Bulb Goes On
Joann Muller 12.13.07, 6:00 PM ET
Forbes Magazine dated January 07, 2008

Lawmakers in Washington want to solve America's pollution and energy problems by imposing higher fuel economy standards on automobiles. Willett Kempton has a more exotic approach: turn cars into rolling power stations that can provide clean energy when utilities need it most.

Kempton, a wiry, 59-year-old renewable energy professor at the University of Delaware with round, wire-rimmed glasses and a shock of white hair, is the nation's foremost proponent of what's known as vehicle-to-grid technology. For ten years he's been trying to convince utilities and automakers that electric cars could draw power at night, when power is cheaper, and then discharge some of that juice back into the grid during the day to balance supply and demand for electricity. Kempton's theory is beginning to win applause from some car and utility folks, but daunting technical and economic obstacles make it a tough sell.

Kempton argues his idea doesn't have to wait for cheaper batteries, the main stumbling block to production of electric vehicles. He's got a way, he says, for owners of electric cars to recoup the cost of even very expensive batteries, the ones with price tags in the $20,000 range. It involves using cars to supply a reserve of electric power that can smooth out minute-to-minute shortages in the transmission grid.

Kempton parks a plug-in Toyota (nyse: TM - news - people ) Scion in his garage that can discharge 19 kilowatts of power from its battery. The average house uses 1.5 kilowatts. "When I run it backwards at full power," says Kempton, "I'm running my whole block," or he would be if the system were up and operating...

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0107/100.html

"Now look at the money to be made balancing transmission grids. Grid operators are willing to pay an average $42 an hour to have a megawatt of power on call, Kempton says. This is over and above any payment the grid makes for the electricity itself; it's simply a standby fee. In Kempton's scenario the car owners get no payment for the electricity because they are not generating it. Whatever the grid operators borrow from their batteries they replace a short while later.

At this point Kempton makes some heroic assumptions. He divides the $42 pot 57 ways to come up with 73 cents per car per hour. Next, he figures that utilities will happily pay these standby fees all day long. He assumes each car will be available for standby work 21 hours a day. (A questionable hypothesis, considering he needs 300 cars to guarantee at least 57 are plugged in at the right time.) Multiply this out and you get $5,600 a year per car. Subtract maintenance costs and a fee for a middleman, and the car owners supposedly will be cashing $2,000 checks every year. Now the electric car begins to make economic sense."

But I'd strongly urge anyone interested to read the two papers I recommended in post #7. It's always good to go straight to the source rather than haveing it filtered for you by a reporter. But if that's what you like there are several other popular press articles at the "press" link on Kempton's site.

Betting on the future value of stock to create money out of thin air is not useful work in my opinion. In the same way, the fact that Banks effectively create money out of debt, and then re-sell that debt as an asset, stinks.