Interesting article on EVs being used to offset Peak rates

[klindholm]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-electric-cars-20131229,0,5640652.story#axzz2oyvYfApV

I really like this kind of "out of the box" thinking on electric vehicles!

Kevin

 

[Kuuuurija]

Wouldn't it be more reasonable, if to use bare batteries with charger and inverter for this purpose? Why there must be a car around the batteries for such a trivial task? It would be much more effective if you do not spend on tyres, wheel, seats, expensive regenerative braking system etc, to offset peak rates.

 

[JoeS]

This is a great proof-of-concept demonstration showing that plugged-in EVs can be effectively used for grid-balancing by either providing or extracting small amounts of energy when needed. The almost-instantaneous response of such a large number of networked vehicles is a grid operator's dream. Don't worry, the impact on an individual car or battery is minimal - it's the aggregate effect that makes this feasible. I thought it was nice of BMW to provide the Mini-e cars for this experiment, and the effect is more dramatic and much simpler than setting up the same number of batteries and then having to manage them.

 

[Kuuuurija]

Then maybe this idea should be adopted by trolleys, trams and electric trains? Unlike EV-s, those public transport units are permanently connected with power lines and can offset peak rates almost any moment. ICE3 train for instance has ~ 450 kWh of kinetic energy running at full speed. When peak power consumption happens in the grid, then all ICEs should switch to sudden regenerative braking, and when there is surplus of energy, all trains should accelerate!
What kind of peaks do you expect when charging your EV in the nighttime?
If you do your daily commute, then it is hard to find a free socket where to plug in. And it is not clear, if there is enough juice in batteries to reach home afterwards, even without sharing the juice with the grid, because you never know when the wind could change!

 

[JoeS]

More details of this V2G effort: http://www.udel.edu/V2G/

Our usual concerns such as letting someone else use our batteries and what SoC do we need to be left with at what time are all part of this study.

Lots of interesting stuff going on in large-scale grid management, especially as solar and wind energy sources start becoming significant.