281 The Vehicle to Grid Episode
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Term
vehicle to grid
Vehicle to grid means that your electric car can not only use electricity to drive but can also send electricity back to the power grid. This helps manage energy use and can earn you money.
Term
electric battery
An electric battery is what powers an electric car. It stores energy so the car can run, similar to how a gas tank stores fuel for a gasoline car.
Concept
vehicle to load
Vehicle to load means you can use the electricity stored in your car's battery to power things like lights or appliances in your home. It's like having a portable power source right in your vehicle.
Term
island load
An island load is when your home is not connected to the main power lines, so it can only use power from sources like your car's battery. It's like being on your own power island.
Term
kilowatt hour (kWh)
A kilowatt hour (kWh) is a way to measure electricity. It tells you how much energy is used, like how long a battery can power something.
Car
Volkswagen MEB
Volkswagen MEB is a platform that Volkswagen uses to build their electric cars. It allows them to use different sizes of batteries, like a 77 kilowatt-hour one, for better performance.
Car
Dodge Charger
The Dodge Charger is a big car that looks really cool and can go fast. It's popular because it has a lot of space inside and can be fun to drive, making it a good choice for both families and people who like sporty cars.
Term
77 kilowatt hour battery pack
A 77 kilowatt-hour battery pack is a big battery used in electric cars. It tells you how much energy the car can store, which helps it go further before needing to recharge.
Term
DC port
A DC port is a special plug on electric cars that lets them charge quickly. It's faster than regular plugs that use alternating current.
Car
Nissan Leaf
The Nissan Leaf is an electric car that can help power homes or the electric grid. It's known for being affordable and easy to drive.
Term
CHAdeMO
CHAdeMO is a type of fast charger for electric cars. It helps charge the car quickly and allows it to send power back to the grid.
Term
CCS
CCS is another type of fast charger for electric cars. It can charge cars quickly and is used by many new electric vehicles.
Term
DC wall box
A DC wall box is a special charger for electric cars that charges the battery faster than regular chargers. It's usually used in places like charging stations.
Term
NMC based batteries
NMC batteries are a type of battery used in electric cars that are made from nickel, manganese, and cobalt. They are popular because they can store a lot of energy in a small space.
Term
battery chemistry
Battery chemistry is about how batteries are made and how they work. It determines how long they last and how well they power your car.
Term
Type 2 connectors
Type 2 connectors are plugs used to charge electric cars, especially in Europe. They help connect the car to the charging station.
Brand
BMW
BMW is a car company from Germany that makes luxury cars and sports cars. They are known for making cars that are fun to drive.
Term
AC to DC
AC to DC means changing the type of electricity from one form to another. Electric cars need this change to charge their batteries properly.
Term
inverter
An inverter is a tool that changes one type of electricity into another. In electric cars, it helps use the car's battery power for other things, like powering your home.
Concept
octopus power pack
The Octopus Power Pack is a system that stores electricity, so you can use it later. It's especially useful if you have solar panels, as it lets you save the energy they produce for when you need it.
Company
BYD
BYD is a big company from China that makes electric cars and batteries. They are known for creating vehicles that help the environment by using electricity instead of gas.
Car
BYD Dolphin
The BYD Dolphin is a small electric car made by a company called BYD. It's good for city driving and helps reduce pollution because it runs on electricity instead of gasoline.
Term
zaptek charger
A Zaptek charger is a special charger for electric cars. It helps charge the car's battery quickly so you can drive it again sooner.
Company
Octopus Energy
Octopus Energy is a company that helps manage electricity for electric cars. They provide services that make it easy for people to charge their cars and manage their energy use.
Company
Renault
Renault is a car company from France that makes many different types of vehicles, including electric cars. They are working on new technologies for electric mobility.
Brand
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a well-known car company from Germany that makes many different types of vehicles. They are also focusing on making more electric cars.
LIVE
Hi, I'm Gary, and this is the EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things
that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking at vehicle to grid.
The EV Musings podcast is sponsored by Zatmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find
and pay for public charging with confidence. So welcome back to the show and season 15 of the podcast.
Now by the end of this season, we'll be at 300 episodes of a show about renewables, electric vehicles,
and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. Thanks to everyone who listens,
subscribes, likes, comments, emails, anything to support the podcast. Thank you very much.
Now there's a couple of small changes to the show this season. Firstly, the timings are
going to be different. Usually the episodes are released to the public on a Monday afternoon at
5pm and I'm moving that 24 hours earlier so that they all get released on Sunday at 5pm. More people
are home at that time and they can watch or listening in the evening or on their morning
commute to work the following day. Secondly, I'm removing a complete segment of the episode.
I'm getting rid of the cool EV or renewable thing that I do at the end of each episode.
Now it served me well for 14 seasons but I think I'm probably going to give it a rest at least
for this season. We'll circle back at the end of season 15 and see whether that was the right
decision or not. Let me know if you found that segment useful. I'd also like to welcome back
ZapMap as the marquee sponsor of the podcast for another season. It's great to have their
support again and they've been instrumental in helping me grow the show and allowing it
to expand. So thank you very much to ZapMap. Finally I want to give you a heads up about a
sister podcast that I'm producing that's only available on YouTube. There will be no audio
version of it at all. It's called the Commercial EV Musings podcast and it's a B2B video podcast
business to business which means it'll be covering topics and companies that are more
focused on the business side of electric vehicles. Now if you're new to EVs or
thinking about EVs it's probably not going to be of much interest to you but if you work
in the EV field it might be worth taking a listen. It'll be updated less frequently
than this main one and all episodes will be fully sponsored by the companies who are taking part.
The link to that podcast is in the show notes. Now our main topic of discussion today is how
you can use your electric vehicle to make you money and help the grid at the same time and
I'm talking about vehicle to grid. So what exactly is vehicle to grid or V to G? Well inside
your electric car is unsurprisingly an electric battery. Now there's power in that battery
and for most of the time it sits outside your house doing well not a lot but on the other side of the
cable that charges it from the grid is a whole network of connectors wires and most importantly
electrical demand. Now you'll have heard of this thing called the Dunkelflout which is a
period of time where the sun doesn't shine and the wind is calm. Well when that happens
the grid has to resort to various other tricks of the trade to generate electricity. For a lot of the
time they use things like BESS battery electric storage systems or gas pica plants but the thing
about BESS is it's fairly expensive to build and it takes up space and gas pica plants are
expensive to turn on and very expensive to run so your electricity as a result becomes expensive
but at the same time you've got potentially millions of electric vehicles just sitting there
connected to the grid with batteries that are doing well not a lot really wouldn't it be good
if we could use the energy in those millions of EV batteries to power the grid? At the
under of the battery you'd get well you'd potentially earn money from the network operator
and the cost to them would be lower because the cost to them would be lower than switching
on pica plants or building a big BESS system so in a nutshell that's vehicles grid. Now of
course it's far more nuanced than that and there are lots of questions around how it would work and
what are the consequences and scaling it and standards and all that sort of stuff so today I
want to talk this through with someone who knows a little bit more about it than I do.
Yes hello I'm Paul Cherubarnfather I work for Zaptech which is a Norwegian Chargepoint
manufacturer and I work in product strategy. We're talking about vehicle to grid today now
in the preamble to this I've already talked a little bit to the listeners about what I think
it is but I'm not an expert on this and you're probably more of an expert than I am so
can you give me your definition of vehicle to grid please? Yeah I mean there are so many
definitions so I'll try and keep it keep it general. I mean vehicle to grid is being able
to take energy out of your vehicle and then connect that energy to the grid the clue is
in the title that might involve you using it in your home it might not and that's where it
gets a little bit complicated but when we say vehicle to grid we mean that the vehicle is connected to
the grid and is able to pull power from the grid and more importantly give it back basically acting
like a big battery buffer system so that's vehicle to grid that's the idea obviously
making it work is technically complex but that's the idea.
So that then raises the question of what is the fundamental difference because you mentioned
you know maybe being able to use the energy in your battery in your house so how does that differ
from the concept that is currently available in a large number of vehicles especially the Korean
ones which is vehicle to load where you've actually got a three pin plug somewhere on the
vehicle and you can run an extension cable and run some parts of your house off that
what's the fundamental difference there so vehicle to load is you can get that now
I mean unlike vehicle to grid which is not quite there yet vehicle to load there's loads of vehicles
have got that and that means that they can supply power to what we call an islanded load
and that the definition of islanded means it's not connected to the grid so if your house is
connected to the grid you can't use that feature to power your home if your house is
not connected to the grid islanded you know completely disconnect from the grid
then you can that's that's so vehicle to load is only works with something as islander that's not
connected to the grid because the grid is very big it's very very powerful you can't just connect to
it and hope that it's going to work because the when we connect to the grid the vehicle would have to
respect what the grid is doing and follow what the grid is doing it can't control what the
grid is doing you know the vehicle versus grid grid wins so there's a big difference between
something that's powering a load under its own steam and can control what's going on that's vehicle
to load that's quite simple and being able to follow what the grid does in a safe and compliant
way so that's why vehicle to load is not vehicle to grid slightly different now I want to come on
and talk a little bit about the maybe get into the detail of how these the vehicle to grid
works and what we need to do in terms of hardware software etc for that to operate correctly but
let's just take a sort of a step back and look at the big picture why is vehicle to grid
an important concept when we're looking at electric vehicles okay so there's a couple of reasons
one is that the energy that's in your battery when your vehicle is parked on your drive
has value you can use it for stuff you could use it to power your washing machine you could
use it to support the the wider grid so you've got this energy which you've paid for and
it's in your battery and it's out there doing nothing now it may be that while your vehicle
is stationary somebody else wants to pay you for more than what you it cost you to put the
bit of the energy in there and and then arrange to put the energy back when it's cheap so you've
got this money maker sat on your drive so if you're not using your vehicle it sort of makes
sense that well that's an interesting idea is that I could I could sell electricity and as
long as I get it back in time for when I want to use the vehicle so one concept there is you know
I could I could make money from it which I think is driving a lot of the interest but the bigger
picture if we zoom out um if we're going to power our charging from renewables and not
fossil fuels renewables sometimes we've got too much renewable energy sometimes we haven't
got enough and the main case for decarbonization for electric vehicles it's really really strengthened
when we charge from renewable energy and it's also cheaper so instead of being able it instead of just
charging when I want to charge but I charge when the energy is available and then maybe give some
of that back when so I charge when I can when even if I don't need to I could charge when
the energy is available and then store it a bit and then give it back even if I'm not
benefiting personally from that what that means is we can use more of the renewable energy that
we're generating because you might be aware that in the UK we actually constrain off the renewable
engine because we've got too much at times this madness and if we've got vehicle to grid what
what the power companies could do is they can put in all vehicles and then pull it back at
tea time when people are presumably not driving and doing that means that we don't need to
fire up the gas plants which means that the electricity gets cheaper for everybody not
just you so you've got this big but so you can see this sort of nirvana that if everybody's doing this
the renewable energy gets used more and more the energy in your car is cleaner and cheaper and
the electricity price falls for everyone else so it's kind of a it's a very very rare case
of a win-win so there's two levels there's the personal benefit but also there's this
wider system benefit which benefits you even if you haven't got an EV so that's that's the
reason why governments kind of get involved in pushing V2G it's not it's not just about the
individual use case although that's a really good one so given what you've just said what is the
potential scale of this so how many cars how many electric vehicles could potentially be linked
into the grid through a vehicle to grid system oh i mean numbers are always difficult on a
podcast because but you know we've got 30 million cars in the fleet something like that
apologies if that's wrong because i'm going to pluck figures out the air and most of those
at any one particular time are stationary and most of those are going to have 50 kilowatt hour plus
battery packs and and of which for vehicles grid obviously you're not going to use the
whole battery you're going to use a bit of that so you know you got maybe 10 or 20 kilowatt hours to
play with that won't get in the way of your plans and so if you do the math which i can't do in my
head right now but if you take 30 million uh uh you know times um uh you know 10 20 kilowatt hours
what that gives you is basically a gigantic power plant that's the equivalent of and again
apologies if the numbers are slightly wrong but it's it's it's it's more than one nuke power station
you know you've basically got this free power station that you can turn up and down and it's
the order of a few gigawatts well in the uk in case uh you're not familiar with the size of the
the uk system you know the lowest load that we see is around 25 gigawatts something like that
and it goes all the way up to nearly 50 it's that kind of yeah we've got about we've got just over 10
gigawatts of solar so we peak at over 10 gigawatts of solar now in the uk on a sunny day we've got
oh crikey wind wind keep it keeps breaking records but i think it's more than 15 it's
probably getting up towards 20 gigawatts of wind so you've got all of that and sometimes we have
to turn it down by a few gigawatts because you've got nowhere to put it well the the
vehicles that there's enough there are enough vehicles or will be enough vehicles to basically
manage all of that problem which means that we then don't need to build lots of really expensive
battery banks and things like that obviously we'll use those for for fast support and and
frequency support and things like that but it means that you've got this gigantic resource
which allows us then to build more renewables and allows us to further decarbonise and
so it's significant let's just put it in context for you pay overnight you might be lucky enough
to pay less than 10 pence a unit for your for your for your kilowatt hours but your day rate in
uk's around 30 pence a kilowatt hour right okay is that cheap or not well the stuff coming out
the wind farms is about two or three four pence a kilowatt hour so you think well you know
surely i'm being ripped off here you know they're they're making like the you know i'm
paying 10 times what the energy cost no no the only reason you pay more is because of all of the
other backup stuff and all the buffering and all of the you know all the dispatch that's needed
and that's what makes the electricity price high in this nirvana where everything is following
the renewables and the renewables just doing the thing apart from the transmission costs
which is five or ten pence a kilowatt hour the rest of it the rest of those costs disappear
the balancing costs so you start to see substantial falls in your electricity bill make you know not
like five percent or ten percent it falls a lot so that's the the objective here is to specifically
bring your electricity bill then so you've talked about the nirvana there and if we
look at the situation where every vehicle on the road is electric and every vehicle on the
road is vehicle to grid enabled and every vehicle on the road has the ability to put in
10 kilowatt hours 20 kilowatt hours etc that's that is you know the nirvana but let's bring
you back to the reality today what's the actual situation you can't do it that that that's the
brutal truth it vehicle to grid is very strange for me as an engineer because we you know
trying to convince people to use solar trying to convince people to use EVs you know the
technology is sort of long since proven and it takes years and years to build up you know
enthusiasm and and and and and pull for the technology right now it pretty much anybody
with big so when can I have it because he can't have it yet which is it's kind of interesting
how attractive something that's quite a technically complicated proposition really registers with
people and they people kind of want this for all probably for all the reasons I've just described
but as of today the unfortunate news is you can't buy a vehicle that will do vehicle to grid
independently of the manufacturer there are one or two that might do it with if you're part of
a manufacturer trial the only so for example and the only ones with any capability that you can buy
today the Renault's which have a nice onboard AC but you have that will only work with their
proprietary charger at the moment so that's good but we're not quite there and the Volkswagen MEBs
unusually this is completely unique the Volkswagen MEBs with a 77 kilowatt hour battery pack they
will let you switch on the vehicle to grid over the DC port anytime it's there in on the menu
it's already there now unfortunately it's got a lifetime limit of 10,000 kilowatt hours so
unfortunately that actually makes it I can come on to how useless that makes it but interestingly
Volkswagen fair play to them they're the first ones to have released this and they did it retrospectively
on on existing cars which is incredibly unusual I think even if you buy a car today unless it's
one of a very few select models it is unlikely unfortunately to be able to do vehicle to
grid ever and that's really kind of frustrating because people want this now but the battery
technology the tech that needs to be put on the car isn't quite there yet it'll come there'll be
vehicles that can do this this year and you know the availability of this is likely to become
more widespread next year but as of today the reality is it's outside of trials and outside of
tightly controlled test rollouts I mean give me an example in the UK you can buy today a BYD
that will do this from octopus from there a power pack fantastic deal that is but it only
works with octopus and it only works with that BYD and it only works within that controlled
environment so that's so you can get access to V2G in the UK today through the octopus power
pack but it's it's very very boxy you can't just go and buy a car that'll do V2G that's that we're
not there yet but if I go back well I don't know four five years there have been trials
with vehicle to grid and I think the famous one was with the Nissan Leaf where you could use
vehicle to grid on the Nissan Leaf and I think there are quite a few people who are involved
in that trial but it needed a quite expensive home charger that was Chathamow compatible and all that
sort of stuff they've been doing this for quite a while yes why are we not further on
so that when the Chathamow vehicles obviously have been able to do this for years I mean
well you know when I say you can't buy them yet I'm talking very much CCS vehicles yeah the
Chathamow Chathamow unusually never stopped you from doing this so so Chathamow people have been able
to use Chathamow based vehicles in trials for years and there's been lots of really good learning
from that which has helped to build the business case to work out what the technical
challenges may be but you're right it's DC so DC means you needed expensive DC wall box which
is still in the few thousand pounds Marx is quite an expensive proposition and the and the handshake
with the car to get it to kind of you know export the power and whatever is relatively simple on
Chathamow with CCS the manufacturers understandably want a lot more control over this because it
is possible is possible to degrade your battery if you if you if you go silly with this
I mean the reality is that real VTG real world VTG isn't going to involve charging your vehicle to 100%
every day and discharge it overnight and discharging it to zero and charging it to 100% and discharging
it to zero while in theory you could do that if you did your battery would not last very long
so especially the NMC based batteries so there is a concern that not that there is battery
degradation but you could harm the battery if it was completely unrestricted so understandably
the vehicle manufacturers want to be able to control and limit what the vehicle can do
obviously if it's got LFP cells it'll be a lot more happier to do this NMC less so it depends
on the vehicle and it also depends on whether the manufacturer actually designed the battery pack
to do this if you didn't design the battery pack to do this which is what was the case with
Nissan Leafs then doing this isn't going to help your battery life if when you design the battery
pack you said oh and by the way we want to be able to do vehicle to grid and not to impact on the
battery life that's perfectly doable but you needed to have asked that question when you were
designing the battery pack so what you're seeing now is based on the learnings from that the
vehicles with the right design of pack in with the right provisions are now coming on to the
market because that takes a few years so all of those learnings are now coming in and you
should start to see it available but these these things take a while you know it's not as simple
as just let me do whatever I want with the battery that's that's dashing a bit too much indeed indeed
so talk to me a little bit about this this is the point where we put our technical hats on
because you've talked a little bit about battery chemistry and things like that so
what are the actual components that need to be in place either from a hardware point of
view in the car from a software point of view in the car from a hardware point of view in the
charger or from a software point of view in the charger to make the vehicle to grid ecosystem
work for an individual so there's there's a there's a couple of ways of doing it i'm going to
only talk about modern ccs and type 2 connectors so that's the big dc connector that the car's
having in europe so there's a couple of ways of doing it one way is what we call dc vehicle
to grid where the two big pins in the in the port that you see there they you basically connect the
battery terminal voltage to a reverse charger or inverter so you know big box on the wall and that
turns the the dc into ac which can then connect to the grid and then you can get the power out of
the vehicle in ac and alternating current which is what the grid uses so we have to translate
between battery voltage is dc and grid voltage which is ac don't need to know why it's just
that's it and you need a box to do that that translation so there's quite a long chain there
and so first of all you need a battery that's ready for this but secondly we need to be able to
talk to between the charger the inverter and the vehicle we need to be able to say okay what
have you got for me how much power can you give me here's here's what you know i can't give
you this right now because i need to be 80% full by tomorrow whatever so that communication between
the wall box that is the thing that has been pretty much holding it up there's a standard i'm going
to quote standard numbers at you which is so it's called iso 15 11 8 dash 20 which defines
how this is done and that was only released in in 2022 which isn't very long in standards then
and that defines how you can do this with dc and even then there are still some gaps in the standard
because it allows a lot of things to be optional at the moment so things like the state of charge
and the battery capacity is all optional not all the manufacturers make that data available
so it's it's kind of there but not quite and so there's a few things kinks need to to be worked
out in the standard to make this just plug and play so that that that work is ongoing now once
you've got the battery and you've got the comms and then you've got this wall box which is quite
an expensive device again a few thousand pounds then there's the grid code because it has to
connect to the grid code we generally got that in the uk because it basically looks like a solar
panel something very similar to a solar connection so if you've got permission to connect to solar
if you've had to go through that that permissions process it's quite similar for a dc vehicle to
grid once you've got all those things in place that's good so we're now able to connect to
the grid safely and we can get powering out good now we need to tell it what to do
and as i mentioned before you personally might want to control it that's fine you can do that
now but then if the grid wants to control these things at scale with millions of devices somebody
somewhere needs to say oh can you charge now can you not charge now and they need to do that in a
standardized way well that standard doesn't really exist yet um cpp 2.1 our most standard numbers
does have all commands in not many charge points have implemented that yet still very new
but eventually that will allow your charge point to form part of this ecosystem where
somebody can you know send the commands to to to help it manage the grid and your car will
respond and it'll all just work but those standards have been quite slow so that's that's the dc
picture and it's great and you can just about do that and bmw are going to launch a service
with that next year on the noia classa which is kind of cool i think Mercedes are looking at so
you're going to see a few but sticking point there is a several thousand pound wallbox somebody's
got pay for that that's kind of so it's nice it works technically but commercially not quite there
yet so there is another approach which is the one that reno have taken with the reno fire
which is really clever and that is you've already gotten on board charge on your vehicle that
turns ac to dc and you plug into your your box plug into a seven kilowatt outlet like this this one
behind and on the car there's a box somewhere hidden in the car which takes the ac turns it
into dc charges the battery brilliant we can modify that box to go both ways to turn it
into an inverter so instead of putting a power ac into the car we can take the dc out of the
battery turn it into ac send it back out through the the cable that's ac vehicles grid now that
modification inside the vehicle to do this is quite cheap i mean obviously any any change on
vehicles but yet there's no there's no like major new components it's a small change to the
inverter so it allows manufacturers to add this capability into the vehicle for relatively little
you know talking like tens of dollars here literally in terms of components it's not very much
you can see why you think well okay instead of needing a whole new expensive wall box what we
could do is is modify the uh the on-board charge from the vehicle so that it can export
seven kilowatts or whatever and that way it takes a huge amount of the cost out fantastic you
know this is this is this is this then makes it commercially viable so this is where reno
have gone and i think others will will follow great let's do that you know let's do that now
today there's a slight problem in that now we've got the ac inverter is on the vehicle and that's
the bit that's going to follow what the grid is doing so now i've got to i've got to communicate to
the vehicle exactly how it needs to behave with the grid and anything but it's a vehicle
it could be in the uk this week and it could be in france next week it could be in Germany
after that and all the grids are different so in order to make this you can see where this is going
so in order to make this work the charge point has to say well actually now you're in the uk so
what you need to do car is this this and this to comply in the uk can you do that and do all the
handshake in the chit chat so that's what we are waiting for now now the standard to do that
which i'm not i don't i'm going to give you the whole title iso 15 11 8-20 amd1
yeah we're supposed to be out last year and uh we were all as manufacturers we're all getting
really excited waiting for this standard because then we can implement it in charge points and
manufacturers can implement it let's get going fortunately it didn't get through the draft
stage there was a lot of questions a lot of challenges a lot of argument from different
stakeholders and it's gone back so we're still working on that and in order to try and move
this forward there's now an international consortium called task 53 so you can look it up on the
internet and find that's a very exciting excitingly titled group and that group is basically
working on sorting this problem out so that's where we are so can we do it technically yes
can we do it commercially 100% that you know the the commercial use cases there now what's missing
is the standardization of the ecosystem to get all these bits to talk together so that's all
that's missing at the moment but it's a significant part and that's that's what we're working on so
so that's a very long answer but uh we're getting there yeah indeed now given what you've
just said and notwithstanding the issues with standards etc etc as you said at the top of the
conversation we do actually have a project where this works and it's the octopus power pack so
it's byd dolphin surf lovely vehicle drove one of those on the london's bright rally last uh last
year in the gearish yellow you need to be an octopus customer and you need something that you'll
know all about which is a specific zaptek charger so given what you've just said about
the complications etc etc how is this how have you been able to make this work using those
components so given as i said the technology is there the capabilities there in the car if the
manufacturer has made it the control signals are there when you've got a an energy company like
octopus they know exactly what they wanted to do so in this world where there aren't the standards
what you can do is implement how you do this in a proprietary way just in a hard coded way you
know send me the command to start the car starts the command to stop and the car stops
so when you've got a single ecosystem which has got an energy supplier the charge point manufacturer
and the vehicle you can join all of those together put a box around it and say right that works
that is the the octopus power pack so if you do it in where you've got all three bits in one box
it works and that is what the bmw noe cluster thing will be launched next year again it's
an energy supplier it's a wall box and it's a vehicle again and what you will see is quite a lot
of those launched in the next year where you are tied to a particular charge point and you're tied
to a particular vehicle and you're tied to a particular energy provider that that's fine
and that's great if that combination works for you but obviously what we really want is for
any vehicle to work with any charge point to it with any energy provider and that's where it
really starts so we're not at that stage yet what we are at is where you can do it in a closed
ecosystem so that's exactly what the octopus power pack is so if you want it now you're
going to have to sign up to a closed ecosystem but if that car charger and an energy provider
works for you happy days you're in luck you can have this now now that raises a number
questions in no excuse me in no particular order so for example you've talked then about
the octopus power pack and it's a bundle so you're effectively when you get the bundle you're getting
the vehicle you're getting the charger you're getting the octopus contract octopus are managing
all that it all gets installed and you know if I sort of summarize it you're you're
effectively a bystander in all this octopus deal with everything you just plug it in and you
get the money at the end of the month etc excuse me now let's assume I go out and I buy a byd
dolphin surf and I buy a zap as that tech charger and I then go and speak to octopus
could they then make that work independently rather than going and buying the whole thing
not today not today okay I mean obviously that's that's what you would like it would
be nice to be able to do but as I said the the comms protocols the firmware what's going on
within the boxes is specific to this implementation so there is some specific stuff that wouldn't be
present on a and a retail I don't know how I can't speak for byd to say how they've implemented it
but you wouldn't be able to access that as an end customer they only they can access that so
that's that's the does that make it clear so the capability is there in within the physical
vehicle I don't think there's any physical changes but unlocking the capability in the
software at the moment is is is is long okay so the next logical extension for that is and
you know I don't have a zap tech charger I have a zappy from my energy is there the potential
for whatever it is that zap tech do within their charger to enable that to happen to also
happen on a zappy so that at some point in the future there could be an octopus power pack
with a zappy rather than a zap tech so that's a great question Gary so I mentioned before that when
when it is opened up to the point where you can mix and match or do yourself and that's where we
want to be there is one criteria that's needed for this and that is that the charge point
needs to be able to talk to the vehicle that there's got to be that comms link now that comms
link requires a specific piece of hardware which I don't believe is present in the zappy it is present
in the zap tech go to and I'm sure it's present in in other in other charges on the market but
certainly present in the zap tech go to but there's a specific communications chip that has to be
in the vehicle so that it can communicate all this stuff over the cable and of course the
vehicle needs to have the same chip at the other end but it's a it's a hardware power line
carrier communications chip that's needed so I think you will increasingly see
charge points on the market that have this capability to talk to the vehicle that's that's
point one so you need the communications chip which I don't think your zappy will have at
this stage so some upgrade needed there second thing is if you're going to do it yourself
or within your house that's probably all you'll need but if you're going to do if
you're going to form part of the national energy system where you're doing this trading
and the in and out of course that's a trade you're getting paid for that as you may if you
want to get paid for this stuff so that means the energy flowing through the charge point
has to be measured to inaccuracy actually you had a really interesting episode and accuracy
which I did listen to and that has to be there you go there we go so obviously if you're
buying a certain number of kilowatt hours and selling a certain number of kilowatt hours back
and you get paid for that has got to be measured in you know you can't just use some random kitchen
scales for that it's got to be a proper trading meter so your electricity meter in your home
obviously has that accuracy but that's not measuring what's going in and out your vehicle
and if you're getting paid specifically what's going in and out your vehicle you need a meter in
the charge point and so again that there's nothing go to has got both import and export
mid certified metering which isn't fully wired into the UK law yet as and I'm sure you're
your your your correspondent on the on the accuracy podcast picked up on this but it's coming
so in order to be a participant in this our expectation or understanding is you will need
a mid certified meter because you're going to be transacting over it so there's a couple
of bits that are needed in the charge point to do this so not quite yet not yet with your zappy but
next generation charge points I would expect have all of this stuff so let me put myself in a situation
there are people who list this podcast who are considering going to electric vehicles they
haven't made the decision yet there may be somebody out there who thinks right in six months you
know I'm a BMW driver I've got a BMW diesel at some point I'm going to move to an electric
BMW it's probably going to be one of the newer class ones that you've talked about I also need
a charger if they go out and say right the charger that I want is going to be one of the zaptech
go to that you've you've talked about it's got the communication chip it's it's vehicle to
grid enabled even though there's nothing on the market at the moment that will allow
the car to speak to the charger independently is it worth their while making that decision
to buy the zaptech charger that's vehicle to grid enabled on the understanding that at some point
in the future that may happen it is as long as the vehicle that you buy this has comes down to the
vehicle that you're buying if the vehicle that you're buying has the ac capability that I mentioned
before then yes absolutely if the vehicle you're buying lacks the ac capability in built in and
requires an external dc wallbox which unfortunately applies to the newer class then in order to access
vehicle to grid you are going to need to buy or get somebody to pay for a large expensive wallbox so
what we're seeing is vehicles are increasingly being launched with the on-board ac capability
but at the moment it's only the the byd that you've mentioned and the Renault's have this
capability and some others but again the manufacturers I can't I can't say too much
because the manufacturers are a little bit quiet about it I'm sure that in due course
the Volkswagen's BMWs and everything else will have this capability but if you if you bought
a newer class a day it hasn't got the ac um vehicle to grid capability on it if that is
incorrect BMW and you've got it secretly in there and you just haven't told anybody I
apologize but the likelihood is that they because they haven't said that it does that I think
we're fairly safe to assume that it hasn't got the the new inverter um ac charger that will become
I would expect the norm because I said the price difference is relatively small on the hardware
so it's a tough call um if you if you were buying a charger and you thought well one day I'll have
a vehicle or when I swap the BMW I'll have something else and that will then yes then
then yes that would that would be ready absolutely but at the moment there aren't
so many vehicles on the market that have this okay so let's move off the hardware and talk about
the actual customer experience and because I know Liz Allen will probably be listening to this and
she's a big uh big fan of customer experience so for somebody who has I mean we'll talk about the
octopus power pack we'll use that as a as an example what's actually in it for the customer
because we've already identified that they don't really have any control over this they plug
in it's all dealt with by octopus and there's going to be some money flowing back and forth but
is that the extent of the the benefit for the customer what what's the actual so the way again
that the the various trials do it differently generally they're not giving you a monetary
reward what they're generally giving you in these vehicle to grid offers is free charging because
that by taking the the monetary transaction out of it it really simplifies things so there have
been some interesting trials where monetary rewards have been given and you get incentives
for plugging in things like that at the moment that the sort of the three major trials that are
available available which is the octopus one in the uk there's uh there's one in germany and
there's one in france what those tend to do is they give you a guaranteed free number of
kilometers per year as long as you achieve a certain plug-in behavior so i do have a presentation
that explains the differences between all of these but i can't remember them off the top of my head
but effectively the octopus one i i think it's 12 000 i think it's 12 000 miles a year
something like that and actually that's limited by it's actually limited by the lease so so you
can't do more than that but if you plug in for a specific number of hours and again
they all do it slightly differently sometimes it's hours within a 24-hour period sometimes it's
hours within a week's period whatever there's some kind of behavior that you are expected
plug-in behavior that you're expected to do so you're expected to leave your car plugged in
and if you do that then you get the free miles so that's that's generally how it works at the
moment okay so i just want to go through some sort of rapid fire questions and you've
touched on a couple of these but we'll just go through them quickly will these hurt my
battery no will i end up with an empty battery in the morning and what's controlling that who's
who's defining so the way the way it works is uh the way it's expected to work is normally you've
you've got a particular charge level you want to achieve a charge level so you set it to 80%
or 100% or whatever you see you've set a charge level in your car and it'll usually have a
by this time so by 8am or by 7am so whatever you've set in that that's the thing that's used
to drive this behavior so if you've said i need an 80% charge by 7am tomorrow then that's what you
will have you will have an 80% charge by 7am tomorrow and in between now and then things
will happen and energy will be taken from the battery put back in the battery as i said you
not generally you know running the but the reason i said with confidence there's not going
to harm the batteries we're only talking seven kilowatts maximum here takes you'd be hard pushed
to completely drain a modern battery and then fill it up again in the in the turn it's plugged in
there's not going to happen because it's not fast enough so you can only um withdraw a certain
amount and uh what you can do is a bit like octopus already do with your charging plan they
say well you've got this much energy now and you need this much energy then here's what the
wind and solar is going to do between so what we're going to do is we're going to you know
give you some energy now and if you're on octopus go you'll have seen it do this it goes on and off
and on and off while it's while it's charging because where they've got spare power they charge
you charge your car and then as soon as they the price goes up they stop it and then it starts
again so it would do a similar thing but instead of stopping and starting like the octopus
tariff does what it will do is it will ramp up and ramp down and go negative and it's just it's
just a more sophisticated way of doing that and that by doing that it allows them to drop the price from
what's octopus these days seven pence a unit it allows them to drop that price to zero that's
that's that's that's how it works okay so what are the because we've talked a lot about the
benefits of this we've talked a lot about the pluses we haven't talked about any of the
minuses what are the downsides to vehicle to grid well the downside is you gotta leave
your vehicle plugged in so you know from a behavioral point of view if you can't leave
your vehicle plugged in if the vehicle is in constant use then it's not really able to
so it's not for everybody but there are enough people who leave their vehicle plugged in full
or stationary for long periods of time so the difference is that you have to do is instead
of leaving your vehicle on the drive you leave your vehicle on the drive and plugged in
so that's that's that's the behavioral commitment that you have to do
the expectation is you don't change your behavior at all you still use the vehicle in exactly the
same way that you always did it's just that if you remember to plug it in you get the at this boost
and if enough people do this which is the expectation that then lowers the electricity
price for everybody else who either has an EV or doesn't have an EV or can't leave it plugged
in for whatever reason it's only for specific use cases but I mean even in the commercial
space you know the classic one in America is the school buses that do their school
runs in the morning and then stay plugged in and when they've done this it's fantastic for
vehicle to grade because obviously the things are basically a giant battery pack and so they do
grid services while they're parked in the depot and then do the school run basically for free
so post office fans are another fantastic use case for this because they tend to be
very busy very local and then they stop but most commercial delivery vehicles aren't used
you know 24 hours they they usually parked up at some point so which point at which point they
can participate but there are so it depends on the use case but for people that can that have
that use case fantastic and if you don't well you don't miss out because by doing this it lowers
the energy price for you it's all good so given that I don't know what the figure is
something like 90 percent of a vehicle's time it's spent not moving now we've been talking primarily
about an individual vehicle on an individual's drive yes but of course there are circumstances
where people have parked their vehicles and it's not on their drive but they may be plugged in
they may be plugged in at workplace charging they may be plugged in at you've talked about
depot charging they may even be plugged in on the 7-11 or 22 kilowatt public network
is there the opportunity to have a V2G aspect for those use cases yeah I mean any time where you
can do flexibility where the vehicle is plugged in for longer than it needs to be just to do
achieve the level of charge so obviously on a rapid when you stop not so much because on a rapid
you're in you want full power there's no real flexibility there so you're only plugged in for
as long as you need to charge so in that context at that point there isn't really any V2G obviously
you can do stuff if there's on-site batteries but at that point no but where you are plugged in for
longer than you need so where the vehicle's going to achieve the the desired target in the
hours that you're there then absolutely 100 percent so you I mean certainly what we see for workplace
charging is that vehicles are usually there all day for the eight hours most of them have only
because they're going there each day particularly in office commutes they've only used a small amount
of energy to get to work and they usually all charged by mid-morning they're only charged
for an hour to end so in that circumstance you've got all the rest of the day for doing this
and obviously if you've got on-site solar then you can do lots of clever things
but there's wherever you've got a long dwell a dwell time that's longer than needed to achieve
the state of charge then yes you can do this where the dwell time doesn't give you any flexibility
no you can't of course the use case that you talked about there with the workplace charging and
solar is effectively the 3ti papillio 3 use case and we've had Mark Potter and the folks from
3ti on to talk about that in previous episodes so i'll put a link in the show notes if people
want to check that episode out Paulie is there anything you'd like to say about v2g that we haven't
covered before we finish i'm going to snap tag what are we doing why am i involved in this well
what we want is for this to work with any vehicle and any energy supplies that's so this
interoperability is key i think it's fantastic that we're doing the the closed trial with
dr bussard the experience you get from that and the knowledge is it's it is brilliant but
for this to go really mainstream because the more mainstream it gets the better it gets it's again
it's quite unusual it's it's brilliant to do a small-scale trial but really what we want is millions
now to get to millions it's got to be interoperable and that is the focus for the industry in the
next year or two is get it to the state that you mentioned earlier on which is yeah i can buy a
car i can buy a charge point i can sign up with a an energy provider and it'll just work
no button pushing and no configuration it just works the building blocks are all in place
they've got some standards work to do and the manufacturers have got some implementation to do
but that is that is the plan for the next year or two and by then we should be in a state where
that's achieved so that's that's our focus as a manufacturer to get it interoperable and get
it working seamlessly with any vehicle and if we can if we can get to that in the next couple
of years i'll be i'll be totally agreed paul i think it's been a great discussion we've talked
about the customer we talked about the hardware we delved a little bit into the minutiae of the
technical data something for everybody i think and i'd like to thank you for your time appreciate
very much gary i really appreciate the the chance to talk to you i've enjoyed it thank you
so here are the takeaways from that discussion first of all all the components
are there at the moment for vehicle to grid we've got a set of standards we've got hardware
that works we've got software that works it just needs a little bit more movement to
standardize this across everywhere pilot projects and trials exist and have done for a while
and if you really want to take advantage of this today you can get the octopus power pack option
or at least go on the waitlist for it and i put a link to that in the show notes in case
you want to apply finally the potential for vehicle to grid is huge with all the vehicles
and all the charges set up to do this anyone who parts their car and leaves it plugged in
has the possibility to get either free charging for their car or to get payment for using the
energy from the battery and this has positive implications for grid stability renewables build
out and for the demise of fossil fuels now i thought this was a great conversation with
paul and i hope you did too do you have any questions that care about this discussion
if so either leave a comment on youtube or email me at info at evmuzings.com
i hope you enjoyed today's show it was put together this week with the help of paul
shira barnfather the evmuzings podcast is sponsored by zapp map the go-to app for evy drivers
helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence zapp map is free to download
news with subscription plans for enhanced features such as using zapp map in car on carplay or android
auto and discounted charging across thousands of charge points if you have any thoughts comments
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you
About this episode
Exploring the concept of vehicle to grid (V2G), this episode dives into how electric vehicles can not only serve as personal transportation but also as energy sources for the grid. Host Gary discusses the potential for EV owners to earn money by supplying stored energy back to the grid during peak demand times, while also reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Guest Paul Cherubarnfather from Zaptech provides insights into the technical aspects and benefits of V2G, including its implications for renewable energy usage and cost savings for consumers. The conversation highlights the transformative potential of integrating EVs into the energy ecosystem.
Original notes
In this episode, Gary Comerford interviews Paul Pschierer-Barnfather, a product strategist at Zaptec, to explore the concept of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. Paul defines V2G as a system where electric vehicles (EVs) can both draw energy from and supply energy back to the grid, effectively acting as large batteries.
He contrasts this with vehicle-to-load (V2L) systems, which allow vehicles to power devices directly but do not connect to the grid. The conversation delves into the technical complexities of V2G, including the necessary hardware and software components, and the potential benefits for both individual EV owners and the broader energy system, particularly in terms of utilizing renewable energy more efficiently.
Paul emphasizes the importance of interoperability among vehicles, chargers, and energy providers to make V2G a mainstream reality. He discusses current limitations, such as the lack of widespread V2G-enabled vehicles and the need for specific communication standards. The episode concludes with a look at the future of V2G technology, highlighting ongoing trials and the potential for significant cost savings in electricity bills for consumers. Overall, the discussion provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of electric vehicles and their role in sustainable energy management.
Takeaways:
- Vehicle to grid allows EVs to act as batteries for the grid.
- V2G is technically complex but offers significant benefits.
- Interoperability among vehicles, chargers, and energy providers is crucial for V2G's success.
- Current EVs often lack the necessary technology for V2G.
- The future of V2G looks promising with ongoing trials and advancements.
Guest Details:
Paul Pschierer-Barnfather is the EV Charging Solutions Expert for Zaptec, a Norwegian chargepoint manufacturer. With 30 years of experience in the electricity industry, he currently leads Zaptec's vehicle-to-grid development programme, and is also Acting Chair of the BEAMA Electric Transport Systems Technical Committee.
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.
Links in the show notes:
- Octopus Energy Power Pack Bundle
- The Commercial EV Musings Podcast - The playlist that will contain all new video episodes of the B2b Commercial EV Musings Podcast. (Youtube only)
- Vehicle-to-grid - Wikipedia
Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk
(C) 2019-2026 Gary Comerford
Support me:
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