Why vehicle-to-grid charging could be the cheapest way to secure renewable energy
Cheaper option
The costs of this aggregated battery would also be much easier to bear as individual vehicle owners would purchase the cars and batteries, instead of government and private investors having to spend millions on big projects. The cost of electric vehicle batteries has fallen some 87% over the last ten years toan average of US$156/kWh(£123/kWh), and is on a trajectory to reach around US$100/kWh by 2023.
Large grid-scale stationary battery system costs areat least doublethis amount. This is because civil engineering works, cabling, enclosures, power electronics and even air conditioning systems for regulating battery temperature are all required for large stationary battery systems.
Vehicle-to-grid storage is still a nascent concept. It requires dedicated two-way charging equipment that can also communicate with the vehicles, as well high-level aggregator control systems. However all of this technology exists.
Indeed there are arange of V2G demonstratorprojects within the UK. Nissan, in particular, has embraced this technology and already offers a more limited_vehicle-to-home(V2H) system that lets people use their cars to store energy from rooftop solar panels until it is needed in the home at night.
So while the UK government is correct that the national grid needs more energy storage to support the shift to further renewable energy generation, a focus on building large, expensive batteries isn’t necessarily the answer. Instead, electric vehicles could enable the British public to conveniently share their cars to help create a cleaner, more altruistic post-COVID world.
This article is republished fromThe ConversationbyAndrew Cruden, Professor of Energy Technology,University of Southamptonunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
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Story byThe Conversation
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