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Vehicle-to-grid technology tested at Energy House

Tuesday 6 February 2018

ENERGY scientists are testing the potential of electric cars to supplement energy in the home.

By recharging when demand is low and returning energy to the grid when it is high, so-called vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology could help householders generate income and support the increasing use of renewables.

The University of Salford’s Energy House, which has an international reputation for testing energy efficiency in the home, has been selected to help figure out how the idea might work in practice.

By building up models of energy flows – usage, storage and generation – in a typical home when it is connected to an electric car, the industry and the Government hope to drive a major UK effort to develop the technology and business case for V2G.

Energy House 

Will Swan, professor of building energy performance at the University of Salford, said: “Energy House can be subjected to simulated climates – sun, wind, snow and rain and is equipped with 300 sensors on windows, doors, walls and appliances.

“That makes it the perfect living laboratory to test what V2G can do because we can measure the gamut of scenarios in controlled conditions.”

The Energy House team are funded to carry out a feasibility study by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, in partnership with Innovate UK.

 

They will be working with partners Honda, who are supplying the first charging point of its kind in the UK at the University, Good Energy, and Salford-based Upside Energy, which runs a cloud service to aggregate energy stored by homes and businesses.

 

Virtual Energy 

 

Upside has created a Virtual Energy Store™ that sells to the grid and shares the revenue with device owners and manufacturers.

 

In order for the technology to be optimised, a much clearer view of the market is needed. Will explains: “It’s not as simple as drawing on the car battery when you need it because there are so many variables such as the weather, household activity, and so on.

 

“In terms of energy efficiency, we know that renewables are problematic because they don’t always generate power when want it. Hence storage options are increasingly important.

 

“We can look at the car or other vehicle as both a battery and a storage tool, but we need to understand better how all these elements relate.”

 

Renewables 

 

Neil Jones, programme manager at Upside Energy said: “We are delighted to be working with the University of Salford, Honda and Good Energy in this project to learn what opportunities V2G offers in supporting the uptake of renewable energy and also providing energy security.

"These tests at a single house level (Energy House) will help us establish a baseline of data which could be scaled up to hundreds if not thousands of homes and vehicles and start to identify what services can be offered to householders and the grid in the future.

Good Energy’s CEO and founder Juliet Davenport, said: “Good Energy are delighted to be a part of this exciting, strategic project to examine the value that electric vehicles can bring to the grid, and to work out how to bring new options to customers in the future.”