V2G: Smart grids meet electric vehicles

[kristopher]

V2G: Smart grids meet electric vehicles


Posted by John Addison 3 comments

In the future, utilities will pay you to plug in your vehicle. Millions will plug in their electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at night when electricity is cheap, then during the day when energy is expensive, sell those extra electrons at a profit. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is a bi-directional electric grid interface that allows a plug-in to take energy from the grid or put it back on the grid. V2G helps solve the major problem that demand for electricity is high during the day when everything from industrial plants to air conditioning is running full blast and then excess electricity is wasted at night.

Several early models of passenger vehicles have enough energy stored in advanced batteries to power several homes for hours. Hybrid electric buses and heavy trucks could power many homes or a school or hospital in an emergency. Recent announcements demonstrate that electric utilities and some automakers want to make V2G a reality.

The Smart Grid Consortium, established in December 2007 by Xcel Energy, will select a community of approximately 100,000 residents to become a Smart Grid City using V2G. Potential benefits include lower utility bills for residents, smarter energy management, better grid reliability, improved energy efficiency, and support for EVs and PHEVs.

Current consortium members include Accenture, Current Group, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, and Ventyx. Smart Grid City will use real-time, high-speed two-way communication throughout the distribution grid. Smart meters and substations will be integral. Installation will be made of thousands of in-home control devices and the necessary systems to fully automate home energy use.

The current electrical grid is poorly designed for distributed generation of power. Individuals and businesses lose months and connect fees when they add solar and other forms of renewable energy to the grid. Smart Grid City will easily support up to 1,000 easily dispatched distributed generation technologies including PHEVs, distributed batteries, solar, and wind.

In addition to Smart Grid City, another major EV/V2G initiative is unfolding.

The Renault-Nissan Alliance and Project Better Place have signed a memorandum of understanding to create a mass market for electric vehicles in Israel, which is an excellent target market: it has a sales tax exceeding 60 percent for gasoline vehicles, gasoline costs over $6 per gallon, most driving fits the range of electric vehicles, and the government strongly supports energy independence.

Project Better Place plans to deploy a massive network of battery-charging spots. Driving range will no longer be an obstacle, because customers will be able to plug their cars into charging units in any of the 500,000 charging spots in Israel. An onboard computer system will indicate to the driver the remaining power supply and the nearest charging spot. Nissan, through its joint venture with NEC, has created a battery pack that meets the requirements of the electric vehicle and will produce it in mass volume. The entire framework will go through a series of tests starting this year.

The Israeli model is different than the rapid battery swap model that Better Place has promoted as better than "dangerous" fast charging. For the future, Renault is working on developing exchangeable batteries for continuous mobility.

As part of the solution framework, the Israeli government will provide tax incentives to customers, Renault will supply the electric vehicles, and Project Better Place will construct and operate an electric recharge grid across the entire country. Electric vehicles will be available for customers in 2011.

Just as wireless service providers offer smartphones at discounted prices, Project Better Place will offer discounted electric vehicles with usage pricing plans. Prepaid 600 kilometer cards are one approach that is suggested. A free car on a four-year plan in France is another idea mentioned by Shai Agassi, CEO of Project Better Place. Annual use of an EV should be less than the average cost of $8,000 per year for using a gasoline vehicle in many countries including the U.S.

Shai Agassi predicts that Israel will have more than 100,000 electric vehicles in use by 2010. This will be 5 percent of the nation's vehicle population. The number represents a significant step toward energy independence.

Project Better Place has already received more than $200 million of venture capital investment. Shai Agassi presented its new business model at Davos. Agassi was an executive at SAP who led the software company to being the enterprise software leader ahead of Oracle, IBM, and all others. (Read Agassi's Davos insights here.)

Success with V2G would be a double win for electric utilities. Millions of EVs and PHEVs would expand the sale of electricity as an alternative to oil. Utilities could avoid building more dirty-peaking power plants. Instead they could buy back electricity at peak hours from vehicle drivers. It would be a financial win-win for all.


http://www.cnet.com/8301-13511_1-9860342-22.html

[bhikkhu]

1. Smoothing out the peak demand curve sounds nice

In theory it would use electric vehicles as a massive storage network to draw on during peak electric demands, which could reduce the need for some new power plants in stressed grids...

But it is more of a "massage" than a solution to anything. An aspirin for the pain while the cancer spreads. Not to be too negative, however. Technology will likely provide us with such clever means of making do during a transitional period where transportation must fundamentally change and simplify.

[kristopher]

2. This is with only around 1% penetration.

There is a hell of a lot more to the idea at 100% penetration.

[bhikkhu]

3. But it is a marginal improvement in grid efficiency

and the efficiency of transport. Which has cost benefits and infrastructure benefits, of course...but the scale of consumption is one real problem, whether you look at the climate change issues caused in no small part by either burning of fuels for transports or burning of fuels for power generation. Another real problem is an economic system structurally addicted to expansion and seeking to allow for expansion in spite of resource limits by means efficiency.

V2G is an improvement but not a solution. If it is simply a means for further expansions in resource utilization it is not even an improvement. A sideshow, one might say, if it distracts from the need for real solutions and real changes.

[kristopher]

4. You have a strange definition of marginal.

Your vision of society is one I reject. It is not in accord with the reality of human behavior, past or present. All economic systems seek increased efficiency, it is a natural part of being human to want to find a better, easier, quicker way to do something. Since you don't realize that or are unable to accept it, I'd say you have no real concept of what human culture actually is.

[bhikkhu]

5. Marginal is a few percent reduction in net energy expenditure

Nothing more was intended.

Transportation is a big contributor to climate change and a big consumer of fossil fuels. If we switched from the direct burning of fossil fuels for transport to powering transport by electricity, we would still be powering transport by fossil fuels, as fossil fuels are extensively used to produce electricity.

V2G kind of sidesteps the issue and treats electric cars as power sources, at least in the literature.

So V2G is a marginal improvement in energy efficiency rather than a solution. What is needed is not just electric transport but alternative energy production...which is a solution hardly past the drawing board at this time. That's why I said V2G is a sideshow. Like many other things, it can have the appearance of a feasible solution (and everyone goes back to sleep) while it actually solves nothing.

[kristopher]

6. You couldn't be more incorrect.

First, shifting to battery electric drive, even powered by the grid, would represent a massive decrease in the use of fossil fuels due to electric drive being around 700% more energy efficient than internal combustion engines. Overall, if we switched totally to battery electric, our net fossil fuel (inclusive of coal, gas, natgas) use would probably decline more than 25%.

V2G isn't a "power source" it is a storage medium that increases grid reliability without major infrastructure investment in storage; a prerequisite for heavy penetration of renewables such as wind and solar. In other words, it makes the "alternative energy production" you ask for not only possible, but cost effective. And, as luck would have it, you are very, very wrong about the fact that such alternative energy is "hardly past the drawing board at this time." In fact, renewables are ready for deployment and are constrained only by inappropriate governmental policies that continue to focus of fossils. With proper incentives for increasing manufacturing capacity in wind turbines, batteries, and solar, there is no reason we couldn't move completely to renewables. How fast depends only on how badly we want to do it.

Nuclear is dead despite the attempts to revive it.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. OK, I'll bite

Where'd you get "700% more energy efficient" from?

[bhikkhu]

9. I wouldn't mind being wrong at all....

I'll look up some numbers when I get the chance and get back with an apology or more argument. :)

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. Smoke and Mirrors

If you use a EV to produce electric during the weekdays when it's needed. Then that energy is not available to be used for transport. That is there is more Battery in the Car than needed. And due to Shock and Vibration requirements any battery installed in a vehical is necessarily more expensive than an equivalent battery kept in a stationary location.

[kristopher]

10. Studies of driver use patterns show availability isn't a problem

Studies of driver use patterns show availability isn't a problem. When you consider the total number of vehicles and what they are doing at different times of day it is obvious that the objection you raise isn't a worry. Drivers will be able to program how much they are willing to sell back to the grid so that there is a minimum that would be available.

Since the infrastructure costs are being paid by the drivers in the normal course of paying for transportation and there is the dual use of transportation & grid support, it is an extremely low cost alternative for storage. Current technology gives about 150 mile range, and most people drive less than 40 miles per day, so there is a fair amount of excess with current technologies. There is a new LIon design that is proven to work but, they haven't worked out the nanotech manufacturing techniques. It stores about 8X current designs giving a range of about 1000 miles on a single charge with the same weight in batteries as now. Until then there are various strategies being considered (one such is aux. battery packs) that can be brought on board for long trips. Another would be batteries designed for rapid recharge, something along the order of 80% in 15 minutes.

I've heard of no problems with shock and vibration in these EVs.

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. Individuals may have different ideas

The typical individual may only travel 40 miles a day. But when you ask them to allow the ISO to reduce there vehicals capability as needed. YOu will find that people also need to know there is a reserve in the "tank". i.e. The school Nurse calls little Susie has a fever. Tommy was in an accident and is at the Hospital etc.


You don't hear about Vibration and Shock issues in EV's because all the vehicals systems are designed for the intended use environment. If you take the batteries used in telephone offices and subject them to vibration testing as per vehical standards, you will get different results.

[The2ndWheel]

11. Everybody wins...wow

It all sounds so perfect.