walkitout (walkitout) wrote,

EV + stationary battery + solar for the win?

I ran across this at Inside EVs: http://insideevs.com/subsidy-free-evs-solar-battery-storage-2020/

It refers to a UBS report, located at an odd site:


If you go down to Figure 11, you can see there is a list of a bunch of other articles, many of which are Q-series, on related topics.

Here's the general argument:


The idea is that this is going to hurt utilities which make money off of generation but will be neutral to positive for utilities which are retail- or distribution-focused. This model does not assume the grid goes away; quite the contrary. It _does_ assume that centralized generation will be decreasing going forward (and there are other articles that focus on that theme specifically).

Hey, good news for those of us who think nuclear power is a bad idea, hunh?

Ironically, the guys over at Inside EVs were really skeptical of this thesis. I am not as skeptical but I am not convinced yet. I do think that there are some great career opportunities for young people going into power engineering or whatever that is called. Because it is clear there is going to be staffing and infrastructure need at all retail- and distribution- focused utilities for years to come, as every bit of commercial property and a whole lot of residential sprouts panels on the roof.

More later: the Surface Pro has come back to life.

ETA: I'm starting to better understand how the pen/trackpad click maps onto the two-button mouse paradigm. I fucking hate Windows.

Okay. So the Q-series report references above has a lot to say about batteries: which chemistry is likely to win for which application and which companies will benefit, also recycling and regulation thereof and who is going to bear the recycling cost and so forth. It is interesting, but I don't understand all of it. R. probably would. They do note that Tesla (heavy) has bet on getting battery costs down, while BMW has bet on weight reduction (carbon fiber). All true, and all observed by BCG in their commentary as well. BMW is going to continue to sell mostly ICE cars and will be subject to all the CO2 regulation that is still driving this bus; they need to reduce weight across the line while maintaining quality. Tesla has no such concerns. BMW and Tesla are both behaving in very strategic ways.

So I have to pick up the pen to click on a link, but if you want to scroll, you have to go to the bar (*yuck*), which means Page Up Page Down are better choices. *sigh* Who made these tradeoffs.

Where was I? Ah. All electric cars are Hondas! Honda dealerships run a little differently, because they require fewer repairs so dealers have to make money entirely on sales. And electric cars are going to behave like that, too. The report doesn't mention the Honda part -- that's my addition.

BCG weighed in on distributed generation's disruptive potential back in 2010: https://www.bcg.com/documents/file51254.pdf
Tags: our future economy today

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