The new perspective on personal transport. Your car can be much, much more.
People understandably measure car ownership costs and benefits carefully. Km per litre, miles per gallon, taxes, insurance costs, maintenance cost, reliability, handling, acceleration and the like.
Now, imagine a power cut to you home and instead of bringing out the candles and gas bottles you flick a switch and your car becomes the electrical supplier to your home.
Now, imagine again if, for the 95% (often more) time your car is parked up that you could use your car to earn significant money as a supplier to the grid .
Well you don´t need to imagine. Because it is happening already in parts of the world. Particularly so for home power back up. Increasingly so for electrical supply and grid load balancing.
Here is an hour long interview going into the details of this game changing concept with Rob Llewellyn and Professor David Slutzky that will change the way you see the car beyond personal transportation. HERE
The key ingredients needed (questions to ask) are a 1) A bi-directional charger on your car. ( e.g. Later model Nissan Leaf, Ford F150 lightening). For home electric back up a box of electronic tricks (an inverter), that changes you cars DC to AC. Now, essentially you are good to go. 2) For earning potential again a bi directional charger, an inverter with grid connectivity and compatibility. (only a few localised schemes are in place at the moment, but are allowing earnings in the 1,000´s a year for owners.
Battery electric vehicles are usually pushed by big oil and gas and other doubters as an electrical grid supply problem. Just not so. Most BEV are currently charged at night on low tariff when power requirements are low.
Now here is the big car ownership mind set change. The game changing opportunity. We have here with use of BEV a solution essentially in hand for mitigation of peak loading and use of electric generator Peaker plants as well as a solution to the (much overstated) wind and and solar intermittency problem. This so called problem is now an earning opportunity for electric vehicle owners. I will also stop the ridiculous practice (scam) of kilowatts being charged at the most expensive rate of peaker plants. - by avoiding there use.
Home back up. This is here and available now. Essentially it is in our hands to use and implement. (Note; An additional advantage to this is you can capture low cost energy in the off peak and use it in you home at the expensive peak period thereby avoiding the these ridiculous high peak tariffs altogether.
Grid connectivity. Most grid suppliers are not ready for this connectivity. Cynics and visionaries may argue they do not want to be ready, as it takes away their monopolistic stranglehold on supply and pricing to us the consumer. That is for us to decide and if we chose do something about!
So is your car a transportation device only? Or is your car a back up for your home power supply a method for avoiding paying peak tariffs and a revenue stream when supplying to the grid?
The F150 lightening for example already as standard lets tradesman use their truck as a power supply for their tools, pumps and other equipment. Hooking the truck electrically to the owners house, a logical next step, attracted huge interest particularly after they had the massive black outs in Texas. A light bulb moment for electric vehicle owners every where .. literally.
Other questions.
1) Particularly relating to grid connectivity technical standards are needed. A significant job of work and will be custom work for each national grid. However connectivity can be done locally more easily, So for example should your local factory or foundry do a local scheme in order to meet their energy needs and have a back up also. This is what is happening now.
There is massive potential also for EV storage and supply from fleet operators battery electric vehicles. Imagine Amazon with its thousands of vehicles having a double double benefit use as a delivery truck and also energy supplier/back up supplier. Imagine Herz and the income stream it can gain from non rented cars. Think about the scalability of a million, 10 million, 100 milion BEV´s each with, say 50 kw hrs of energy. You start to see the potential. You begin to understand why the electricity monopoly suppliers feel under threat.
2) Particularly for the car chargers a global certified standard is needed. (at the moment we have Chademo, CCS, Type 2 and GPT China, - similar to the mobile phone shenanigans). The sooner one wins out the better, particularly a certified standard.
3) Does it mess up my battery life / cycle life. A good and fair question. Broadly speaking no, as a grid connected typically cycles the battery charge around 70% which is healthy for a battery. Better in-fact for the battery than charging to 80% and leaving it. Better than using super fast super chargers and better than fast acceleration and driving. Plus battery chemistry is advancing things for the better.
4) Types of Bidirectional Charging
Bidirectional charging allows your car to send energy to various recipients, but the most common current applications involve returning car battery energy to your home, business, appliances to another vehicle or even to the grid, (different countries have different technical standards of grid and hence is taking longer).
Vehicle to grid (V2G): This is the most common application of bidirectional charging. Through a converter that’s usually present in the charger, it allows vehicles to send energy directly back to the grid. This can facilitate more energy efficiency for a local power grid and lead to cost savings by enabling charger owners to get paid for helping maintain grid reliability — something we will discuss more below.
Vehicle to home (V2H): Bidirectional V2H charging turns your car battery into a backup power source for your home. This also allows for more efficient energy usage and potential cost savings and typically relies on technology that’s built into the charger.
Vehicle to load (V2L): This is probably the most common type of bidirectional charging available today. With V2L charging, you can use your EV battery to power appliances and tools on the go. This type of charging relies on vehicles that have built-in converters and 120-volt plugs for charging appliances and devices, both of which are becoming increasingly common.
Vehicle to vehicle (V2V): Another application of V2L charging, allows you to pass energy from one car to another. A more detailed explanation is HERE
Case Study. Numbers include, Battery health, miles driven, energy imported, energy exported and reasons to change to V2H from V2G (although part is still V2G)
Year 1. Nissan Leaf 61kwh, Indra Bidirectional Charger V2G. OVO Energy Supplier. 8,000ml
Year 3. Nissan Leaf 61kwh, Indra Bidirectional Charger V2G. OVO Energy Supplier. 23,000ml
Year 4. Move to V2H and Octopus Energy. Nissan Leaf 61kwh, Indra Bidirectional Charger with V2H software enhancement.
Vehicle to Grid V2G is at different stages of evolution in different countries. It is more complex than V2H vehicle to home. Here is a pilot project in Spains Balearic islands with Acciona. HERE https://www.acciona.com/updates/news/acciona-energia-sets-up-first-bidirectional-charging-network-electric-vehicles-spain/?_adin=02021864894
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