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.
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.
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.”
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.”