Tesla says a million EVs will have limited impact on the grid and will help soak up excess solar. Right now, the company is often paid to charge its EVs because of negative prices.
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“So the energy is in the system, and we can tailor it right now, because there’s negative prices during the day, and we’re flooding the system (with solar) that could go quite easily into the fleet with a million vehicles with in my opinion.”
Tadich also noted that the the company’s Supercharger fleet, already at more than 100 supercharging sites, is doing most of its charging during the day, when electricity prices are often negative, which mean Tesla often gets paid to charge its EVs. “That’s just showing the way that the energy systems are evolving,” he says.
Chau Le, the head of e-mobility at Origin Energy, says the growth of EVs is presenting a unique opportunity to transform two major industries.
“We’ve got an energy system that needs to decarbonizse, and EVs provide such a valuable energy asset to support that decarbonization journey,” she said.
“These cars have batteries, like 60 kilowatt hours, multiple times the batteries that people put in their home.
“So if we can connect all of these millions of batteries on wheels to the energy system to soak up all of that excess renewable energy that is otherwise curtailed and then feed that back into the grid during periods of high demand, that is massive value that the transport sector can add to the energy sector.
