Energy from electric cars could power our lives — but only if we improve the system
Two apparently contradictory studies come together with recommendations
Oxford, November 22, 2017 – Power stored in electric cars could be sent back to the grid – thereby supporting the grid and acting as a potential storage for clean energy – but it will only be economically viable if we upgrade the system first. In a new paper in Energy Policy, two scientists show how their seemingly contradictory findings actually point to the same outcome and recommendations: that pumping energy back into the grid using today’s technology can damage car batteries, but with improvements in the system it has the potential to provide valuable clean energy – and improve battery life in the process.
Electric cars store excess energy when they are idle. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology makes it possible to transfer that energy back to the grid when the car is not being used. This energy could help regulate the frequency of the electricity supply, reduce the amount of electricity purchased at peak times and increase the power output of the system.
Two recent studies, one by Dr. Kotub Uddin at the University of Warwick in the UK and the other by Dr. Matthieu Dubarry at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, seem contradictory, with one suggesting that V2G degrades car batteries and the other that it improves battery life. But the two scientists worked together to look at how their studies overlap, showing that they actually come to the same conclusion.
“Although both our papers seem contradictory, they are actually complimentary,” said Dr. Dubarry. “V2G is not going to be easy, but, if done properly, it has a chance to make a difference for both utilities and electric vehicle owners. We need more research to understand the process better and benefit from the technology.”
The two authors agreed that in order to be economically viable, V2G has to be optimized between the requirements of the car owner, the utilities and the capability of the grid. In other words, the needs of the different people and systems involved have to be balanced. The question then became ‘can this technology be profitable?’
The previous studies had different approaches to answering this question: Dr. Dubarry showed that using today’s V2G technology can be detrimental to the car battery, while Dr. Uddin found a smarter grid would make the process economically viable, and even improve the battery. In the new paper, they critiqued each other’s work and found shared conclusions. With improvements to the system, V2G could actually improve electric car battery life and be profitable for everyone involved.
Measuring the impact of the technology on the battery is challenging. After two years of analyzing lithium-ion batteries, Dr. Uddin and his team developed an accurate battery degradation model that can predict the capacity and power fade in a battery over time under different conditions, such as temperature, state of charge and depth of discharge. That means the model can predict the impact of V2G on battery health. Using this model, they created a smart grid algorithm that shows how much charge a battery needs for daily use and how much can be taken away to optimize battery life.
Dr. Uddin says funding is needed to develop new testing standards and control strategies to guide policies that support V2G. One key element to improving the system, he says, will be the measurement of battery degradation.
“The metrics used to define battery degradation may also impact the optimization process,” he explained. “A critical component is who is responsible for estimating battery degradation? Utilities are currently taking the lead in the EU, but it might be more economical for the battery manufacturers or car manufacturers to do it. In this case, standards need to be written which define what we mean by ‘state of health’ when it comes to batteries, and the metrics that are used to determine it.”
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The paper:
“The Viability of Vehicle-to-Grid Operations from a Battery Technology and Policy Perspective” by Kotub Uddin, Matthieu Dubarry, and Mark B. Glick. (DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.11.015). The article appears in Energy Policy (November 2017), published by Elsevier.
Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.11.015.
This nonsense reminds me of a wonderful “Rick and Morty” scene
This is such a good idea we should all get inverters and make money running our cars all night and banking the feed in tariffs.
They are merely piling more stupidity on top of stupidity, and somehow, I get the feeling that once again, ratepayers as well as taxpayers are going to be on the hook for this nonsense.
and who is on the hook for all the health costs
from fossil fuel pollution? costs about
$200 bill per year in the US alone.
Hey it’s just a system problem–nothing that an authoritarian government couldn’t easily handle. Big Brother could just force everyone (except party leaders, of course) to work when and where it makes the system work best. One week (or day) you could start work at 2 AM, on another at 3 PM. And of course you could be moved around the country at anytime to wherever your services could be most efficiently used.
Resistance will be futile. You could be working from a re-education camp until you learned to be a more loyal citizen and not so selfish and learn to say from your heart, “I love Big Brother.”
I enjoyed the latter half of my career as a systems engineer. “Hey it’s just a system problem” is a phrase I and my colleagues loved / hated to hear, especially from our Program Manager. We hated it because it indicated the he.she hadn’t a clue. We loved it because we got paid to try to clean up the mess later on – “you can pay me now, or you can pay me later”.
Was someone being a little subversive in placing a bicycle in that picture? because if electric cars become universal, bicycles will be the way that most of us will be getting around. I feel slightly blessed as I am quite a keen cyclist and, even at the age of 59 will be spared the indignity of standing in the rain waiting for the next cattle truck to arrive.
Regarding the OP. The problems of keeping your worthless piece of shit electric car charged with intermittent renewable power are big enough without the idiots flattening your batteries on the rare occasions that you do manage to get them charged up.
Isn’t that a pic of Anthony’s car charging up in his garage? With the bike parked next to the car…is that the subtle message? Naw, bicycling is fun exercise too. But maybe take the bike with you in the EV, just in case.
“bicycling is fun exercise too” There was me thinking that it was a way to dramatically increase the odds of random suicide on the road.
Several cyclists I knew never thought it would happen to them.
SteveT
Sometimes this stuff is so stupid its annoying. I think this is one of those occassions.
If this madness ever becomes reality expect the availability of 3rd party devices to sense when the power is flowing the wrong way and disconnect.
Short term an easier answer may be to dial the charge rate up and down to smooth the load on the grid. V2G is not going to permit significant time shifting of power generation over more than a few hours at most.
BTW based on extensive research on many types of lithium ion batteries, I wouldn’t trust their battery degradation model any more than the climate models.
But John, they can do real time testing on the battery degradation over many cycles…no models required like climate science. We all have biases…time to read the next article.
Yarpos
Agree one trillion somethings.
Sounds like perpetual motion!
I think that this story should not be taken too seriously. It reminds me of the ‘CO2 sequestration’ proposals that were being bruited about a few years ago. It was all good, clean academic fun — impractical rubbish, but fun.
Hey guys, sorry am I allowed to say that or should I say hi persons. Let’s just stop feeding the politicians with their ‘stupid’ pills, forget about EVs and just keep with the old ICE. They work, there is an infrastructure to keep them running and we don’t need to pay billions to muck around changing things.
Nice size garage, unfortunately cars wont fit in the garages of the dwellings in the new high density developments now being constructed in the Uk, These houses are so small the so called garages are needed for general storage.
Be it a 2 bed or 4 bed dwelling only 2 parking spaces are allocated per dwelling, some have only 1 space therefore cars are predominantly parked half on the walkway half on the roadway, in the evening and weekends virtually the full extent of the walkway accommodates parked cars.
“Although both our papers seem contradictory, they are actually complimentary,”
=======
Define “seem”, then “actually”, and then make me guess what the next non-sequitur might be.
This is like a game right ?
A “proper” game nonetheless.
… and also define ‘”complimentary”. I reckon he means “complementary”.
All what these studies shows are that windmills and solar panels have large deficiencies, like not making power when needed, and sometimes making power when not needed.
It is always the users that should change behavior, but what if the providers corrected their problem them selves, just a simple thaught.
why shouldn’t it be
users responsible for
not creating dangerous
climate change?
would you change your behavior
if the lives of your ancestors
depended upon it?
or complain about it?
This proposal shares the same defects of all perpetual motion machines….it doesn’t work in reality.
Perpetual motion or perpetual fraud?
These two have no idea how the grid operates and they left out soccer moms, the elephant in the room.
Literally? Or Figuratively? Or both?
From the paper: “We need more research to understand the process better…”
To be read we need more money.
research was once free? when
was that?
The same problem as with the EV in general — massive changes/additions to the power grid and associated infrastructure, all the way to the individual customer level, will be required — re-wiring every home with new drops, main breaker boxes, two-way AC/DC converters, etc etc.
When all that is done, then all you have is a widely distributed battery system – capable of smoothing the grid, maybe, but not acting as massive storage, I don’t think.
The EVs need to be charged at night/when not in use. Unless there are big advances in technology, the customer base of EVs can’t both be charging up and powering the grid at the same time.
Seems to me the electric self drive car thing is coming from people who live in coastal California where for most of the time the weather is rather benign. Hope they test under bad conditions with icy roads, snow, heavy rain etc. Heavy rain might cause a problem for camera vision and also perhaps for radar.
As for V2G lunacy, can we just build nukes? Then we won’t need anything else and electric cars may be somewhat sensible. I see Elon Musk is talking about nukes for power on Mars as he recognises the limitations of solar power there as revealed by Tom Mueller, his rocket engine designer, in a recent interview.
yes, i’m sure all the ev engineers
have never thought about
rain or the need to test in it.
duh.
ps mike – elon musk’s
role isn’t to be
practical.
I think I need a massive studies grant to develop my idea for putting a retractable mast and sails through the sunroof window of my car so enabling me to cut out all this electricity crap and use wind power directly. That should be good on motorways.
The factor they overlook is that thew average worker needs his or her car to get to work, and not getting to work on time, more than few times in succession, can mean the end of that job. Thus a situation where your car’s battery might be drained in the morning is simply no good. .
“I think I need a massive studies grant to develop my idea for putting a retractable mast and sails through the sunroof window of my car ” Until you encounter the first bridge.
Ian – I did say a telescopic mast so that I can tastefully momentarily dip the sail under the bridge and continue. This is no more insane than the idea that within a few years we will have our current (sorry about the pun) transport needs replaced by electric go-karts. I travel early in the mornings 30 plus miles on roads on which a steady procession of cars is taking people to work. There is no direct public transport and the reliability of ICE engines is such that there are few interruptions.
In the dark and cold of winter I can guess how electric cars will be failing that particular test.
Perhaps they could have retractable floors so that the green virtue signalling drivers can imitate Fred Flintstone.
my brother-in-law has
an electric bmw…. he
gets to work on time all
the time…. and then he plugs in
there — employer benefit —
and then comes home on time
too.
“Although both our papers seem contradictory, they are actually complimentary,” said Dr. Dubarry. Surely that should be “complementary” in the mathematical sense of an opposite set of results. The same way that Anthropogenic Global Warming / Climate Change / Chaos causes drought/flood/ice/melting/hurricane/calm – all mutually exclusive sets of results are covered, and we simply didn’t fully comprehend the contradictory study which can be ignored once the actual results are in.
Either your car generates excess capacity when you drive or it functions as a capacitor for the grid. Both concepts are nonsensical.