Porta Santo Electric Vehicles used as Power Stations.

?


I just watched a TV news report with my wife and had to try to explain it too her.


The car has to be charged during the day and isn’t available to use, then at night the battery is being drained and is not fully charged in the morning.


That isn’t going to work in northern countries, there isn’t enough hours of sunlight to allow sufficient charging in between short journeys.


Andy 

More info about vehicle to grid systems.

https://media.group.renault.com/global/en-gb/groupe-renault/media/pressreleases/21223215/premiere-mondiale-groupe-renault-experimente-a-grande-echelle-la-charge-bidirectionnelle-des-vehicul


Z.

If the idea becomes more widespread, and involves private vehicles,  it is not clear how folk should be correctly compensated for the life shortening of their batteries, but I can imagine it becoming a sore point.


Such systems might benefit from dedicated storage batteries. (or as it is coastal, a pumped storage lagoon...)

I didn't see any mention of the EVs back feeding into the grid in this case.


The storage seems to be from entirely separate stationary plant - which just happens to be able to re-use old EV batteries.

The Renault Group “also created two stationary energy storage units, offering a second life to batteries from Renault electric vehicles (132 kW).”

  - Andy.

Ah, OK, I've just seen the BBC news report - and that does say that they are back feeding from the EVs to the grid (although seem to think it's due to some novel 'reversible battery' technology ?)


  - Andy.

The island covers 16.28 sq miles, it is highly unlikely that anyone will do a round trip of over twelve mile, unless there is a very active car sharing scheme it must have some of the worlds least used cars.


If this scheme doesn’t work on this island it will never work anywhere with its long hours of sunshine and cars that can only do short trips; and if it does work here it doesn’t mean it will work anywhere else with less sunshine and longer roads.


Andy

vehicle to grid VTG.. doesn't have to be solar,  car charges up at night using dirt cheap electric.. comes the morning and everyone and their missus shoves the kettle on, a small amount of power is fed back into the grid (10%) because your exporting it, the smart meter pays you back at the expensive morning rate...    uses power when its cheap and abundant then helps when demands at its peak..   simples..  

gary

The car has to be charged during the day and isn’t available to use, then at night the battery is being drained and is not fully charged in the morning.


That isn’t going to work in northern countries, there isn’t enough hours of sunlight to allow sufficient charging in between short journeys.

It's maybe a bit more subtle than that. If you're running an island you'd probably have enough wind to supply your baseload, probably plus a bit, and then you'd have a peak of solar production centred around the middle of the day - which would be good for feeding air conditioning plant in hot areas but not much good for the evening peak. So the car could fully charge while the (desk bound) driver is at work, discharge a bit on the journey home (but probably still 70% charged), then during the evening it helps the grid during the evening peak (maybe down to say 40% to keep a reserve) and then re-charges overnight from wind when other loads are low.  There'd, I imagine, be an option for drivers to raise the reserve temporarily, if they expect to start an unusually long journey before morning. Zoe users probably won't be that bothered about the extra cycling shortening the battery life, as the batteries are normally on lease from Renault (at least they are in the UK), rather than owned by the driver - so as long as the tariffs are attractive (overall it makes it cheaper to opt in) then I think there would be some takers.


On a larger cloudier islands like the UK it would need to operate a little differently of course, but usually there's merit in pooling resources like that - sharing what you don't need day-to-day but at the same time having access to larger capacity when you need it. It works well in all sorts of areas - from power networks to computer memory, so I don't see why it shouldn't work for batteries.


   - Andy.

There is a big flaw in the plan for replacing petrol and diesel vehicles with electric vehicles,  There may not be enough raw materials to make the batteries.


Andy B.