Electric cars seen as killer app for smart grid

WASHINGTON--Where you see an electric car, your utility sees a battery on wheels.

Forward-looking utilities are gearing up to tap into the stored energy that plug-in electric vehicles can provide using smart-grid technology, said industry executives at consulting firm Kema's Utility of the Future conference here this week.

Car batteries can provide a buffer to lighten the load on the grid during peak times and potentially provide back-up power to homeowners. Down the line, old plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) batteries could be recycled as storage devices, they said.

Duke Energy CTO Mohler

"I think PHEVs will be the killer application for the smart grid," said David Mohler, the chief technology officer of Duke Energy. "They are able to both consume and provide energy like no other device can and can really change storage."

A number of plug-in electric vehicles aimed at mainstream buyers will become available over the next two years. Although there's no standard storage capacity, Mohler estimated that four of them could power a house, at least for a short time.

In the near term, the most promising marriage of the grid and car batteries is providing what the power industry calls "frequency regulation." It's an arrangement that could save utilities money, reduce pollution, and potentially save consumers money, advocates of the approach said.

Utilities routinely pay for frequency regulation services to ensure that the supply of electricity matches the demand. When an imbalance between supply and demand causes a change in signal frequency, power generators crank up to adjust the flow of electricity.

But a network of plugged-in electric vehicles could effectively perform the same function by taking a break--even for a few minutes--from charging their batteries. Charging cars in bursts--all while ensuring they're topped off when the drivers needs them--could be done with millions of cars, said Alec Brooks, a renewable energy engineer at Google.

Google has developed proof-of-concept "smart charging" software with algorithms that monitor the electricity supply and very precisely control when cars get charged, he said during a presentation where he showed simulation data. "You figure out which ones you need to dispatch (electricity) to be full when they say they need to be full," Brooks said.

Using car batteries for frequency regulation--already a billion-dollar market--is more cost-effective and would allow power generators to take better advantage of wind and solar power, which are variable, Brooks said. Google is testing the software on its fleet of eight converted plug-in hybrid Priuses.

"You can shape the load to match renewable energy, which can be very different even within one day...So you have a system where you move the load around rather than the generation," he explained.

Saving money on the Chevy Volt
It's not just software engineers at Google who are tooling around with PHEVs and frequency regulation. When the Chevy Volt is released at the end of next year, the car will have smart charging built into it using the OnStar service.

In a Department of Energy research project, General Motors is working with 50 utilities to see how the Chevy Volt can interface with utilities. Providing grid services, such as frequency regulation, will lower the cost of owning the Volt, said Keith Cole, GM's director of advanced vehicle strategies and legislative affairs.

"If a customer can sign up and say they are willing to have their charging interrupted for 140 seconds and the utility will pay them to do it via a credit, it would cut the cost of charging the Volt," Cole said. "So instead of costing 7 or 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, it might cost 5 or 3 because of the service."

A battery on wheels. Click on image for a slide to see various types of electric vehicles.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

Although this will be technically possible when the Volt is first released, don't expect it to be available for a while. The business models for these types of services have yet to be worked out.

Still, cutting electricity demand for frequency regulation makes sense for utilities because the power purchased for this job is relatively expensive, Cole said, adding that a utility would only be interested if it could get large numbers of cars under management.

Farther out, utilities could potentially pull stored electricity in car batteries to lighten the load on the grid, rather than fire up an expensive and dirty auxiliary power plant during peak times. But that two-way power flow, called vehicle-to-grid, is technically challenging and puts added strain on the battery.

Auto/power mash-up
To illustrate how the auto and electricity industries are connecting, Chrysler anticipates that it will be producing over 1 gigawatt of electrical capacity per year by about 2015, said Tom Sacoman, the portfolio executive of Chrysler's ENVI electric auto division. That's about as much power as a nuclear or coal plant can produce.

Sacoman anticipates that customers will be offered a range of options--sort of like cell phone pricing plans--when they buy an electric car. In some cases, they would allow the utility to control the speed of battery charging in exchange for a discount. In other plans, the customer would not cede control at all and pay full tariff.

Although it's still years away, utility companies already have designs on used-up plug-in electric vehicles' storage, most of which will be lithium ion batteries. The Chevy Volt's battery life, for example, will have a 10-year, 150,000-mile warranty.

But some grid energy storage executives think customers will swap out a car's original batteries for newer, better ones sooner than that as the performance degrades. Those same batteries could be recycled, either to provide back-up power in a home with solar panels, for example, or looped together as big storage banks for utilities.

"A battery could be taken out of that car and used for a stationary application in a home where it could live for many years," said Brad Roberts, chairman of the Energy Storage Association. "But who owns the battery? To make PHEVs really take off, we need to have consumers buy the car and lease the battery."

Battery leasing is essentially the business model developed by BetterPlace, which owns car batteries and provides charging stations at homes and public places. Having cars plugged in as often as possible makes grid services, such as frequency regulation, far more feasible, executives said.

Just like getting discounts for consumers offering grid services with their electric cars, recycling old electric batteries for storage needs a viable business model. Some entity will need to collect them and repackage them for utilities, said Ali Nourai, manager of distributed energy resources at utility AEP.

"We know the auto industry will bring the prices down for batteries," Nourai said, who estimated it would take about 10 years before these car batteries will be available. "We don't need a brand new battery."

[moviegeek65]

Although frequency regulation is a novel idea very few Americans will buy an electric only vehicle, hybrids with batteries makes better sense.

[mlamonica]

Just to be clear, this sort of grid service would work with any kind of plug-in car--hybrids, range-extended electrics, or all-electrics.

[wdbuck]

Everyone is very optimistic about Electric Vehicles and PHEV. You should read what I wrote about what they are not telling you? There are technical challenges that need to be resolved. The idea of having millions of PHEVs on the road is still 10-20 years away. Lithium supplies are also an issue. These articles make it sound like its a forgone conclusion that this will solve our problems. At best it will be a niche market initially. Read at - http://bit.ly/auEye

[theBike1945]

I'm truly amazed at the silly idea of using auto batteries for grid storge. Do these folks really believe that car owners are going to allow their batteries to be used and the extremely high value destroyed by some utility company? I would never allow mine to be used up in this fashion. And if the grid is willing to pay, and pay a proper amount, then why in the world would the grid not prefer to buy and control their own batteries? The whole scenarios is one more example of what happens when some brainless California professors set out to solve a problem. And I have yet to see the first media article that even recognozes the absurdity of the concept. Boy, what a brainless country. No wonder the Chinese are cleaning our clocks in every single conceivable way. Oh yeah, I see a bright future for this country - paying 20 cents per kilowatthour for solar power while the Chinese are building one new nuclear reactor every two months and producing power for less than 2 cents per kilowatthour. This country is just plain dumb. No wonder California is bankrupt. The state's been mentally bankrupt for years.

[FloridaMBAMom]

I'm with theBike 1945 - there is no way I would allow my car to be arbitarily tapped for electricity. That's a ridicullous concept. Our reliable, affordable energy is what other countries want. Those who tout solar - I'll buy you panels if you disconnect from the grid. If you want to stay connected so your utility to supply you with back up when your panels are not producing, they will have to build the same reliable fossil fuel and nuclear plants they would have to build, if you didn't have the panels. California is a financial disaster because of its propensity to jump on dumb ideas.

[carlhage]

You have to read the article carefully. They are proposing using recycled hybrid batteries for energy storage. PG&E in SF is already doing that. When the batteries are too weak for a car, there is still useful life for grid storage placed in a building where size and weight are not crucial. I agree that it doesn't make much sense to power the grid by selling electricity from the car as some advocate. (With leased batteries, that means they could be charged off-peak and swapped into the car during daytime.)

The meaning of "smart grid" here is to use controlled car charging to quickly adjust the electric demand, and to smooth out the usage peaks and valleys by adding, subtracting, or time-shifting demand. Controlled demand from car charging (or grid-aware refrigerators, etc.) allows the utility to reduce the power now wasted for spinning reserve (also called frequency regulation), and allows time for power plants to be switched on/off.

If cars are charged mainly at night, we don't need to build new power plant capacity-- the demand at night is so low that there is excess capacity. Moreover, the most efficient power plants need to run 24 hours/day, so the difference between day and night demand is filled by inefficient peaking plants. So adding demand at night allows the utilities to improve the overall efficiency and lower fuel/CO2 per kWh. (PG&E has a special tariff for EVs that is half the price, but only at night, and double otherwise.)

With wind energy (or even clouds passing over solar panels), the electric production can vary from minute to minute. Either the wind suppliers need to provide extra generators or battery/flywheel storage to stabilize the grid, unless car charging, etc. can adjust demand to match available short-term supply.

It's interesting to note that solar PV panels generate on the order of 100 times as much energy/acre as biofuel. Corn ethanol yields are ~400 gal/acre/year, switchgrass could be ~800, biodiesel yields range from ~50 gal/acre/year (soy) to ~600 (palm) , but the per-mile equivalent use in a car would be ~15,000 biodiesel-gal/acre/year covered in solar panels. Even at todays prices, PV covered fields are cheaper than gasoline. (Caveats: batteries are still not cheaper than gas, and algae could theoretically get close to PV in yield/acre.) So instead of growing ethanol, a farmer could set aside 1 meter of a 100 meter deep field for PV panels and create the same transportation energy. Note that instead of charging a car just with solar panels, its always better (for the environment) to charge the car during lowest demand, meaning nighttime until there is excess PV capacity.

[rudev]

I dont think electric cars are a good idea. We are allready short of electric supply. This would mean that
new powerstations have to be built all over the place at the cost of the taxpayers. We are allready paying for DEPT RETIREMENT CHARGES! If this gets accepted we, the taxpayers, have to foot the bill.
Smarten up taxpayers, you will be paying for the electric cars for the people that can affort to purchase
them. More and more dept retirement payments on your hydro bill aswell as the steep gas bills for your own vehicle because you can not affort a electric car. Ten more nuclear powerplants may need to be build at your cost, You will be going back in time 100 years and if you are lucky you might be able to affort a bycycle.

[justinf79]

Not many new power plants would be needed if the people would just buy some solar power panels and throw them up on their roff to have them charge the batteries. As long as the new power plants use renewable-clean energy sources, there won't be much of a problem.

[ferricoxide]

Last I checked, at least in the US, power companies were not government-owned. So, it wouldn't be coming out of your taxes. You'd see it on your electricity bill (just like you already do when they have to fire up a new plant to provide service for those new neighborhoods in your region).

[mlamonica]

Adding millions of cars to the existing grid today would strain the grid but if charge cars at off-peak car times, like the middle of the night, then that problem is greatly reduced.

One study in Germany estimated that there would be minimal carbon dioxide reductions if there were one millions cars and they all were powered by coal plants. See this article.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10231102-54.html?tag=mncol

However, if you avoid a big spike in electricity demand -- i.e. don't charge half a million cars at 5:30 at night -- then utilities can their existing power plants, according to people who study this story of thing. In some places like California, the wind blows more at night so there's an opportunity to take better advantage of wind.

[James Anderson Merritt]

The 52 KWh battery pack for the fully electric Tesla Roadster could run my house for almost three days.

[KarlQuick]

The "smart grid" is a "dumb idea".... it will be opposed by:
1) environmentalist who will object to the impact on the environment (e.g. "view");
2) privacy advocates who will object to sharing info on how they use power;
3) security experts who will fear the impact of terrorists/hackers on the grid;
4) "freedom" tin-hats who will feel that it gives government or "big business" too much control over their home/"power";
5) survivalists / minimalists / independents who what to live outside the "tentacles" of an over-bearing society.

Writing all the environmental impact statements to run the cables from the windmills in the great plains to the energy sinks on the east/west coasts and getting them approved by the many, many local and regional interest groups will be more than enough legal hassle to delay the grid for DECADES.

Meanwhile, the 3rd world will do to "power grids" what they did to "land lines". They will by-pass that phase of development and go directly to distributed generation in the form of private solar cells and micro-nuclear power plants based on Thorium ( see thoriumpower.com and many other companies.) While we're still getting consensus (or stuffing "the solution" down the throats of our citizens via raw political power), the 3rd world will be eating our lunch with "small is good" solutions the way they did with cars and cell phones.

[ecacofonix]

The proponents of PHEVs working with utilities are assuming too many things. First, smart grid is yet not there, and it is not entirely clear whether they will be able to provide the benefits they are claimed to provide (and by the way, the even the exact definition of "smart grid" is not fully clear - it seems to depend on the person you ask). Next, the article claims that using the smart grid concept, someone is going to recharge the batteries at specific time periods and still ensure that the car does not run out of power when the driver needs it most. Now, perhaps Google has it figured out, but not too many people are going to leave their transportation fate to Google - they do no wish to be stranded midway without charge - and if it is not even a hybrid, boy, how do they move from there?

The whole idea of electric cars is fascinating, but I think we are years away before people who are not the innovators will even start thinking of buying them as their main transportation vehicle. And just so you get the full story, there are over 750 million vehicles on the roads today world over, and it is expected that 3 million electric vehicles will be sold by 2012 (http://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=1310 ).

Anyone investing in the electric cars market should understand that they are investing for the long term.

NS @ Alternative Profits - http://www.altprofits.com/ref/report/report.html

[christinedawson]

Electric cars will really make life interesting. The biggest problem EVERYONE will have are the current mechanics and auto shops will have to be retrained which will cost valuable time and money. Not to mention the added expenses to get these cars maintained...

[mlamonica]

Actually, electric cars have a lot fewer moving parts while internal combustion engines are getting more complicated. There's no track record to judge things on yet but electric vehicle company say they expect maintenance charges to be lower.

[moviegeek65]

Repairing electric cars is easier than internal combustion, the problem is the range(~40mi) and the strain on the electric grid....not to mention it takes 6hrs for a full charge.

[jimoase]

Lets say that the all electric vehicle is around the corner. Lets say that in a volume about the size of an existing fuel tank we can generate 25...50KW @ 400...600Vdc.

When that happens I think we can start taking down electricity power distribution poles. The same power source that could power a vehicle could power a home (200a @ 115Vac = 23Kw)

We are not going back to better internal combustion at 30% efficiency when 80% + efficiency is available with electricity. All this hocus pocus is about converting energy to a rotating shaft. Many 60% efficiency hydraulic applications can also be replaced by local placement of electric motors.

Thanks to smaller and more rugged computers electric motor systems will reshape vehicles of the future and replace electric distribution infrastructure in the process. What existing vehicle manufacture has experience using electricity instead of the mechanical marvels of internal combustion and automatic transmissions? Those devices are heading for a museum near you.

The key is miniature power generation rather than better electric storage. In either case AC is going to be a problem, batteries don't like it, long distance distribution doesn't like it, just about every device in our homes and offices don't like AC. Why should AC live on? AC is the QWERTY of our future electricity needs.

Jim

Jim

[zowl]

This is not a fairy tale, this is in the works, there is already a place in Colorado referred to as Smart Grid Ciry.(http://electricandhybridcar.com/?p=759) This is the solution to building more power plants by using local distributed power and yes the grid will be providing local battery plants, so off peak and peak can be equaled out. The department of energy is way ahead of this curve There book is free and downloadable http://www.oe.energy.gov/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages(1).pdf they recognize it as an immense task but it must be done.

If you haven't seen the interview done by Wired with Better Place CEO Sahai Agassi who was next in line to become the CEO of SAP it is worth checking out. This game is full on and it is a race to make an impact on what looks like the rising tide. you can see the movie on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNIijgJcsbs

This is why the Government is giving big incentives. All it is going to take is a terrorist attack on the oil fields in the Mideast and a dirty bomb type of attack would render them unusable. Then you will buy an electric car powered by coal.

[KenGrubb]

moviegeek65,

40 mile range, most often cited in reference to the Chevy Volt, is a 40 mile AER, or All Electric Range. GM has dubbed the Volt an EREV, or Extended Range Electric Vehicle. In truth, it's a series hybrid plugin. It has an ICE with a driving range of several hundred miles--equivalent to other ICE vehicles of it's size.

True EVs like the RAV4-EV, Tesla Roadster, 2010 Ford Transit Connect EV, 2012 Nissan EV have ranges from 100 to 220 miles.

RAV4-EV - 150 miles
Tesla Roadster - 220 miles
Transit Connect EV - about 100 miles
Nissan EV - about 100 miles

Recharge times can be improved with fast chargers and higher voltage. Fast chargers that can accept 440 to 480 volts can charge in times from 10 to 30 miles.

Ultracapacitors will be the game changer.

[KenGrubb]

A study by EPRI looked at the issue of PHEVs and the grid.
http://www.epri-reports.org

They concluded millions of plugin vehicles would not bring down the grid and it would result is cleaner emissions even if all the electricity came from coal.

49% of U.S. electric comes from coal
15% in California
17% in Washington state

California and Washington state have some of the highest concentrations of hybrid vehicles owned so it stands to reason those states will have high rates of PHEV and EV ownership early on.

EVs are 75% efficient. ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines) are only 20% efficient.

Bottomline: EVs will be much, much cleaner than ICEs in the early years, and even as drivers in coal centric states buy EVs the air will still be cleaner.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html
http://www.cted.wa.gov/site/539/default.aspx
http://www.polk.com/TL/PV_200903_Issue007_HybridSector.pdf
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/evtech.shtml

[tfcsd2]

"who owns the battery? To make PHEVs really take off, we need to have consumers buy the car and lease the battery. Battery leasing is essentially the business model developed by BetterPlace, which owns car batteries and provides charging stations at homes and public places."

Get ready to have another corporation with their hand permanently in your back pocket. This means that there will be no used, salvaged, or remanufactured battery market. Thus the poor will likely be stuck with ICE's or no cars at all.