Electric cars could help balance the UK grid

• 13 years ago (2011-05-11)
• Junior Isles

Europe 1089 North America 1021 Nuclear 659 Renewables 776

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Electric vehicles may help the UK cope with erratic renewable power generation in the future by recharging when demand is low and supplying the network when demand is high, the National Grid has said.

Electric vehicles may be able to balance 6 to 10 per cent of the nation’s power generation by 2020 and lower demand on fossil fuels as backup, National Grid said in a report released in partnership with Ricardo Plc, a UK producer of fuel-efficient cars. The annual return to the car owner would be around £50, the companies said.

Britain, with its current aim to get 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, is planning $120 billion of offshore wind projects as well as gas and nuclear plants to replace aging generators. A surge in renewable energy projects, which are more variable than traditional thermal power sources, will boost the need for back-up generators and management of energy usage, authors said in the report.

“Great Britain’s electricity grid is a highly meshed network,” the authors said. “The overriding principle of operation of the Great Britain electricity network  – and any other large scale network  – is to match electricity supply precisely to consumer demand on a second-by-second basis.”

In fiscal year 2010, National Grid spent £270 million on so-called ‘reserve services’, the report said. These services, which can supply energy within 2 seconds and 20 minutes depending on how long they are required, are needed to manage variations in usage and to handle unplanned events like power plant failures.

Grid operators use demand-side management to shape usage patterns when there is a surge in energy use or a sudden drop in supply. In the future, electric car owners could be paid a fee if they are willing to refrain from charging at times of high usage. In the future, cars may supply power stored in their batteries to the grid when they’re not in use.

“Plug-in vehicles may be able to work in synergy with the electricity market to smooth the daily demand profile,” the author said. This may help reduce “the need to meet additional balancing requirements by simply running more ‘conventional’ generation and potentially incurring additional carbon dioxide emissions.”