Electric car batteries might serve as reservoirs of green power?

Why don't we just go 100% Nuclear for electric power generation then the whole problem goes away. And no, nuke waste is not a problem, it can be reprocessed.

First of all, nobody stores power -- time for supposed "technical" editor Conner to review her basic units & physics. One stores ENERGY, kitten. The cycling inefficiency and wearout mechanism of the batteries in question have to been addressed, not to mention the huge reuse & disposal aspects of the problem. Uncontrolled energy flows and uneven densities across huge areas make for an uncontrolled, terrorist/hacker-vulnerable network. Fuhgeddaboutit!

The whole EV-to-Grid plan seems to assume EVs have more battery capacity than necessary. This can not be true: the primary hurdle to building practical EVs thus far has been the inability to make batteries with adequate capacity. Why would I spend $10,000 on a big battery for my car, and then dump half of the charge every day before I drive home?

Many of the 'solar' battery banks are 530 AH x 6 v, or 3Kwh. A BTU is roughly 1000 watt/seconds, or .3 WH. A 12,000 BTU air conditioner ("normal" window unit) is cooling air at a rate of 4Kw, and maybe drawing 4.5Kw of electricity. Four 3Kwh batteries might occupy a volume of two to three cubic feet, essentially the same size as the air conditioner. The electric car, in comparison, would need two or three times that number of batteries, and you're using vast amounts of electricity just to haul around all that weight. For window units, batteries could be housed under the window (they should be outside the house). For central air they could be located next to the condenser. Using large battery banks to run Air Conditioners makes far more sense. BTW, Austin gets their wind from West Texas, such as the Guadaloupe Mountians, and from the Texas Panhandle. These wind farms are hard to miss on the satellite images.

Why not just cut the fossil fuel generator back by 6% at night, and utilize the 6% you saved for the next day?

There are so many absurdities here that I have to assume this was an April fool's day joke that just missed its slot.

I have to assume that a significant amount of the electricity goes towards Air Conditioning? In which case, a different "energy storage" mechanism might be useful; that of freezing water during the night with the "excess" wind energy, and using it during the day for cooling. I am sure there are problems to work out, but seems a lot "greener" than lead-containing batteries, and possibly more energy efficient (i.e., freezing/using the water is more efficient than storing electricity in a chemical manner in a battery). I am no expert in this area, so would appreciate any corrections people may offer.

A fully interactive system will come after the transition to IPv6, when every device, connection, person, etc. can have its own I-net address, and cheap easily-programmed controllers are developed... An application in another context: windshield wipers on = "it''s raining here"

DWDaniel''s scenario, sounds like nightmaire, can be improved electronically. The wind charging and wall plug can apply at same time. In the early morming if the wind has not fully charged the battery, controller will activate the wall plug charge to pickup the rest.

In order to gain the most from V2G work schedules would need to be motified to take pressure off the peak demand , allowing employees time to get home before the crunch, using less energy, and prepared to collect the wind. There are tracking, parabolic, concentrating, photovoltaic collectors,that produce 18to25kw that can be mounted on the normally dead space of a roof, providing shade, storage and lower energy needs for the building. Austin would then have dual power, wind and sun. The Catalyst to make it could be V2G.

Ok, This sounds like really good thinking...You charge the battery during the night, wake up and go to work...electric usage is low at that point, ya plug in and recharge using excess power available in the morning. Your car is fully charged by 3p.m. but you don't go home until 5:30, the grid sucks up your EXCESS energy from 3 to 5:30, you un plug and drive home. You're now nearly depleted, plug in start recharging...this recharge cycle could be staved off until when the wind usually picks up at 8:30 to 9 p.m. after the dinner dishes have been done and the kids are washed and in bed. Cooling is slightly less after dark, the grid has excess energy to spare and your car has time to recharge for tomorrows drive in.....sounds plausable to me.

An even more promising V2G application is regulating "area control error" or ACE. In this application, the battery would be charged and discharged, to compensate for ACE. The 2001 report had a series of computational errors. One was that the authors assumed that the vehicle would be connected to a Level 3" charging system, which is a quick-charge connection. However, the Level 3 charger is intended to be quick charge, and not continuously connected to a single vehicle. The report should have used a Level 2 (long-term charger) or included the capital cost of the Level 3 charger in the V2G costs. Also, ther was no money going to the provider of this service; the authors assumed that all the revenue would flow to the vehicle owner. One of the unknowns is the rate of battery life degradation of the V2G option compared to conventional electric drive vehcicle use.

Has consideration been given to the finite number of cycles the electric vehicle batteries can be charged/discharged? The real cost in this type of program needs to have that addressed as well.