FUTURE ENERGY
THE GRID OF THE FUTURE
COULD HAVE WHEELS by Adam Turner, Contributing Journalist, iMOVE Treating electric vehicles as ‘batteries on wheels’, an innovative new technology has the potential to play a key role in Australia's renewable energy and net zero emissions strategies, while letting electric vehicle (EV) owners make the most of their investment.
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ith Australia leading the world in the number of rooftop solar panels per capita, many households are already evaluating the benefits of an in-home battery for storing excess solar power. As EVs become more common, owners and grid operators will also be able to take full advantage of the battery sitting in the driveway. Through iMOVE Cooperative Research Centre (iMOVE), The University of Queensland (UQ) has launched an international trial to determine whether the spare battery capacity in EVs could be used to drive the uptake of renewable energy, power homes and support the grid. The 'Electric vehicles: Supporting uptake, investigating smart charging' project focuses on studying how EV owners currently use and charge their vehicles. It aims to understand how EV adoption could be accelerated, by examining consumer willingness to purchase EVs and participate in smart charging programs.
electricity is cheaper, to ensure they have enough charge for the next day's driving. Just like in-home batteries, the excess power stored in EVs can also be offered back to the energy provider, a fledgling concept known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G). Treating networks of EVs as virtual power plants adds capacity to the grid, manages EV charging, and allows for better utilisation of distributed energy and assets. This can lower infrastructure costs and better manage peak demand, to help providers bring down energy costs. EVs can also be utilised to store excess grid power during the day to combat voltage fluctuations and other power quality issues, which can force home solar systems to reduce their output on sunny days when too much energy is being fed back into the grid. While there is a range of technical and infrastructure challenges to overcome, V2G has the potential to make a significant contribution to Australia's energy needs. It can also play a key role in assisting the transport sector in reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
How does it work? As with in-home batteries, in-vehicle batteries can be bi-directional – used to store excess solar power and then provide it back to the home when needed – known as Vehicle-to-Home (V2H). Using EV batteries to power homes in the evenings, rather than drawing expensive peak electricity from the grid, allows households to both reduce power bills and the peak load on the energy network. If required, vehicles can recharge from the grid late at night, when off-peak
Transport and energy sector engagement One of the key challenges with implementing a national V2G strategy is understanding whether EV owners are ready and willing to surrender control over how and when their vehicle charges. In this project, UQ has partnered with EV analytics platform Teslascope to address these questions. The study is recruiting Tesla owners internationally to better understand driving and charging behaviour across the globe.
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iMOVE Managing Director, Ian Christensen, said for electricity to be a good candidate for replacing fossil fuels, there needs to be increasing engagement between the transport and energy sectors. "iMOVE stands ready to assist industry participants to engage with this question of what technology they are going to utilise in order to become more sustainable into the future," Mr Christensen said. "We're not advocates of any particular solution, except we would observe that the transport sector will need a range of solutions to curb its carbon emissions because there's no one solution that will satisfy all the transport requirements."
Enormous power potential While many new EVs coming to market offer a driving range of more than 400km, most private vehicles are driven less than 50km a day. E-Mobility Research Fellow at UQ and Head of Policy, Electric Vehicle Council, Dr Jake Whitehead said, in theory, if all of Australia's 16 million cars were EVs with a modest driving range, they could store enough energy to power the entire country for 24 hours. "I'm not suggesting the entire country will be solely powered by electric vehicles, but the potential storage capacity offered by an orchestrated V2G program illustrates that it could have an important role to play in soaking up excess renewable energy and providing it back to the grid during peak demand," Dr Whitehead said. "The excess energy capacity in EVs presents an incredibly valuable resource, but only if EV owners are willing and able to share it, and are properly compensated for doing so."
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