Given that utility scale solar is much cheaper than residential solar, I wouldn’t be surprised if utility scale energy storage is also cheaper than vehicle storage.
Lithium ion is optimized to be light, which is not an requirement for grid storage, which could make use of molten salt, pumped hydro, compressed air, or hydrogen electrolysis.
[1] https://www.indra.co.uk/v2g, https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-to-grid-char... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
Surely it have to be there but restricted to business, no? I remember seeing laundries and restaurant in small towns
Also, all buildings in the US/Canada have split phase power, not just businesses like laundromats and restaurants. Split phase is one of the three 240 V phases split into two 120 V lines. Electric ranges, dryers, and baseboard heaters in residential buildings commonly use 240 V by utlizing both 120 V lines.
Nearly all transmission and most distribution in the US is done with three phases. Commercial and industrial access to three phase is very common, though this will vary by region/utility.
Residential access is less common, but not that unusual. In some places, you just call up the utility, tell them what equipment you'll be using (i.e. what amperage you'll require) and provided it's enough demand to justify it, they'll run the lines at no or minimal cost.
Residential split phase is usually based on pole-mounted transformers that serve a limited number of customers. They are, themselves, operated off the three-phase distribution.
The USA has literally hundreds if not thousands of power companies. So the answer is "it depends". But it's not very popular for residential. If for no other reason than it gives you 120V/208V, whereas most high power appliances prefer/need 240V.
In my experience you can get three-phase even in small towns for commercial/industrial. For example, I've seen it for water heaters in on-premises laundry rooms in apartment buildings.
Up until "recently", you could even get DC power in NYC. Here's an article about its demise: https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1541316
HN loves to talk about "technical debt", but software problems pale in comparison to supporting power distribution decisions made 141 years ago. Harder to "refactor" copper cables than it is to rearrange lines of code. Still, they seem to have done a good job updating things while maintaining "backward compatibility".
> “This new research into the potentials of V2G shows that it could actually improve vehicle battery life by around ten percent over a year.”
This requires intelligent usage where the battery state of charge is kept within a limited window, not fully charged or drained.
[1] https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/clean_ener...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421...
For most people, if they really need to drive hundreds of miles unexpectedly, I doubt spending 15 minutes at a high-speed charger to top up the batteries will be an issue.
I live in Norway so not a huge issue, and I expect it to get better. Circle K for example is pushing hard to build high-speed chargers at their stations.
Plus it could be a setting, where people can tell the car to top it up overnight instead of optimize for battery life.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03605442173068...
That likely isn’t given! I haven’t looked into it thoroughly but apparently most of the cost of utility solar is transmission and billing. Australian residential solar is really booming right now because it’s 6-7 cents / kwh. See Saul Griffith of Otherlab’s article: https://medium.com/otherlab-news/green-new-deal-how-much-doe...
Very frustrating that a putatively semi-technical publication like Electra doesn't even attempt this, or ask their interviewees estimates.