On the day of a blackout, a trial of vehicle-to-grid technology proved both the capacity of electric vehicles to support grid stability and the importance of exactly when vehicles are charged.
This project utilised 50 ACT government-owned Nissan LEAF electric vehicles and chargers across Canberra.
the results also highlight the need to be smarter about how all electric vehicles charge, especially during such emergencies.
In February, once the vehicles had discharged power for ten minutes, nine vehicles started charging. This is because their default behaviour is to charge when their batteries are below a certain level. It’s the last thing the power system needs while trying to stabilise.
The six vehicles that switched to an idle state after ten minutes must have still had enough energy in their batteries. That one vehicle kept discharging for ten more minutes was due to a software bug.
What’s more, when we looked at data from other ACT government vehicles parked in these properties, we found 23 were charging throughout the event. Again this directly obstructs power system recovery.
There would have been absolutely no inconvenience or cost for the vehicles to delay charging for an hour or two.
electric hot water heaters could also make a big contribution without causing inconvenience.
This is great for short term outages, but they aren’t considering multi-day outages. I lost power in NJ for 11 and 13 days on separate occasions in one year. I wouldn’t want my vehicle to be drained of energy as an event like those started. But shutting off hot water heaters is a pure win.
The article says the intent was to discharge for only 10 minutes. That’s perhaps long enough for the grid to failover to another source and re-balance.
I would love the idea of using the car battery to power my house temporarily during an outage and would readily donate 10 minutes of battery to the grid.
I wouldn’t want my vehicle to be drained of energy as an event like those started
In the long run there would be ideally thousands of EVs and home batteries working together, such that no particular battery would be drained but contributes a little to the whole. But individuals could make their own tradeoffs on this, if they prefer making more money over the risk of draining their batteries (as prices are likely to be extremely high during shortages, assuming the individual is exposed to the wholesale market). Ideally, these tradeoffs could easily be controlled by a non-technical user and fully automated, but it’s still early days.
This is great for short term outages, but they aren’t considering multi-day outages. I lost power in NJ for 11 and 13 days on separate occasions in one year. I wouldn’t want my vehicle to be drained of energy as an event like those started. But shutting off hot water heaters is a pure win.
The article says the intent was to discharge for only 10 minutes. That’s perhaps long enough for the grid to failover to another source and re-balance.
I would love the idea of using the car battery to power my house temporarily during an outage and would readily donate 10 minutes of battery to the grid.
Yes, discharge and then postpone recharge. The discharge seemed to work great but they all mostly recharged as soon possible.
I mean the choice is nice to have.
In the long run there would be ideally thousands of EVs and home batteries working together, such that no particular battery would be drained but contributes a little to the whole. But individuals could make their own tradeoffs on this, if they prefer making more money over the risk of draining their batteries (as prices are likely to be extremely high during shortages, assuming the individual is exposed to the wholesale market). Ideally, these tradeoffs could easily be controlled by a non-technical user and fully automated, but it’s still early days.
This type of analysis and process needs to be carried out before I, an I assume others, will be comfortable participating.