Luckily, any degradation can all be predicted ahead of time.
A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.
So a smart algorithm can decide it's worth draining the battery back into the grid if the profit to be made is more than 8 cents.
Buuuut... Delaying charging till later is free. So another car owner's car might see on the futures market that delaying charging starting from 6pm till 11pm might save a few cents.
Obviously that means it's most economically efficient for every owner to do grid balancing merely by smartly delaying charges - and in turn price fluctuations will rarely exceed 8 cents.
The component that is missing to make this happen is cars which have code to automate this process, and markets in place that have API's to let the car buy and sell energy, and futures in energy, by the kwh. Users need not understand how it works - they just tick the tickbox which says 'charge and discharge smartly to minimize electricity costs'.
Today, those markets are typically only open to big players, cars don't have a tickbox, and wall chargers typically won't let a car put power into the grid.
A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.
So a smart algorithm can decide it's worth draining the battery back into the grid if the profit to be made is more than 8 cents.
Buuuut... Delaying charging till later is free. So another car owner's car might see on the futures market that delaying charging starting from 6pm till 11pm might save a few cents.
Obviously that means it's most economically efficient for every owner to do grid balancing merely by smartly delaying charges - and in turn price fluctuations will rarely exceed 8 cents.
The component that is missing to make this happen is cars which have code to automate this process, and markets in place that have API's to let the car buy and sell energy, and futures in energy, by the kwh. Users need not understand how it works - they just tick the tickbox which says 'charge and discharge smartly to minimize electricity costs'.
Today, those markets are typically only open to big players, cars don't have a tickbox, and wall chargers typically won't let a car put power into the grid.