Time For Electric Vehicles
1
How Parked Cars Could Power the Future
By Michael Schirber, Special to LiveScience
Caption: A modified VW Beetle supplies power to the grid in this
2002 demonstration. Credit: AC Propulsion
Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of
emerging energy technologies — the power of the future.
Imagine running a parking meter backwards and actually being paid to
park your car. Along those lines, electric vehicles might one day
make money for their owners by providing electrical storage for the
nation's power grid.
The monthly income could add up to a lot more than what you pay for
a big-city parking ticket and many moving violations.
The concept, called vehicle to grid (V2G), is based on the fact that
your car is typically not being used 90 percent of the time. "What
if it could work for you while it sits there?" said Jeff Stein from
the University of Michigan.
Of course the car has to plug into a socket, so that electricity can
flow both into and back out of the battery. Renting out electrical
storage in this way could make electric vehicles more affordable,
while also removing the need for backup electricity generators.
Stein and his colleagues have just received a $2 million grant from
the National Science Foundation to explore the possibility of V2G
technology using plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
"We want to show that it doesn't have to be a one-way street between
vehicles and the grid," Stein told LiveScience. "Utility companies
could benefit from having a million batteries for storing
electricity."
Grid operations
A network of little batteries spread throughout the grid has certain
advantages over a single centralized electrical storage facility. If
you can get some of the juice to run your appliances from your
neighbor's electric vehicle, then that electricity doesn't have to
travel as far.
"Electricity consumption is widely distributed, so it makes sense to
inject electricity at multiple sites," explained Tom Gage, CEO of AC
Propulsion, a California company that manufactures electric
vehicles.
A number of small V2G demonstrations have taken place with cars from
AC Propulsion and other companies, but the amount of electricity
drawn was insignificant. Even as larger projects come on line, the
goal is not to have these batteries on wheels provide the grid's
primary (baseload) power, but only extra power to smooth out
fluctuations.
Fluctuations can occur in the outlet frequency (60 Hertz in the
United States) if supply does not match demand. For this reason,
grid operators pay to have extra electricity generators that can
respond to any sudden changes in electricity consumption.
This so-called "regulation" power is purchased in blocks of 1
megawatt each. One megawatt could be supplied by 100 or so pure
electric vehicles (EVs) or 1,000 or so PHEVs, Gage said. It takes
more PHEVs because they have a smaller battery, which is
supplemented by a gas-powered engine.
(Typically, an EV can store roughly 30 kilowatt-hours on its battery
from which it can supply around 10 kilowatts of electric power,
while a PHEV can store about 5 kilowatt-hours and supply around 1
kilowatt, Gage said.)
Because not all the electric vehicles will be plugged in at the same
time, studies are currently looking into just how many EVs or PHEVs
need to be grouped together to ensure that there will always be 1
megawatt of power available to the grid from the ensemble of
vehicles.
Can I charge that?
Simulations have shown that an EV owner could get $300 per month as
part of a group of cars that offer their batteries for regulation
power, Gage said. A PHEV would presumably earn about a tenth of this
rate.
Even with that extra dough, though, no one is going to want to come
out to their car and have their battery dead. This is unlikely, Gage
said, because the grid operator would only be shuffling power in and
out of vehicles, so the net effect would be at most a 20 percent
drop.
However, a lot of the details have yet to be worked out for V2G.
Gage said there will need to be some long-term field trials to see
whether battery life is shortened by the constant ebb and flow of
charge between grid and vehicle. And work continues on how best to
keep track of which cars are supplying power to the grid and for how
long.
Gage thinks it might take five to 10 years for enough electric cars
to be on the road and for V2G to be truly viable.
How Parked Cars Could Power the Future
By Michael Schirber, Special to LiveScience
