This is the proposal from E-Flex, a company led by Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration program and Imperial College London. So-called vehicle-to-grid technologies, they explained, address the problem that too much can cause electric vehicles charge at one – put pressure on the net – and turn it around. Cisco Head of Innovation for the UK and Ireland, Peter Shearman, said: “When you take full advantage of the battery capacity of electric vehicles and feed that power back into the grid, you start to reach a critical mass where you influence the carbon emissions, the cost-benefit economy, design, compliance with government net-zero regulations and much more.”
Scale, Cisco Business Solution Architect Roy Donaldsdon agrees, is key to the E-Flex concept.
He said: “We are not talking about one, two or three vehicles. We asked: what happens if a fleet owner parks 100 electric vehicles? We wanted to see how that fleet concept changes the dynamics.
“Suddenly I go from a single van with an 80-kilowatt battery to one multiplied by 100. That’s 8,000 kilowatts potentially parked there.”
To date, E-Flex has been trialled with electric vehicle fleets owned by public and private sector organisations, located in 20 different locations, from Scotland to the south coast of England.
Each is equipped with special two-way charging stations that allow parked electric vehicles to be returned to the power grid.
According to Mr Donaldson, the times when electric vehicle fleets tend to be abandoned align ideally with the “non-linear nature of energy demand”.
He continued: “The demand for energy is peaking in the demand curve. It goes relatively straight and then shoots up from 4pm to 10pm.
Cisco Global Sustainability Lead Sielen Namdar added: “The potential is huge in this space – particularly for industries such as utilities, transportation, retail, government and energy suppliers.
“Integrating electrification into their systems opens up a whole new dimension of business models and opportunities to innovate.”
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While the E-Flex project has so far focused on fleet vehicles, the concept has significant potential to be applied to private cars as well — with two-way charging stations installed in homes or even airports, where cars often run for days or weeks at a time. inactive.
Guy Diedrich, Senior Vice President and Global Innovation Officer at Cisco explains, “What if I get into my fully charged car in the morning, drive to work, do my shopping and come back with half the charge in the car?
“I plug that car in at home and at that point my vehicle becomes a net payer, back to the net with half the load built into that car.
“There is a huge demand for people coming home, cooking dinner, turning on TVs, air conditioners and all the other things we do at home.
“Then that vehicle starts pulling again at a fixed time after midnight.”
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In exchange for a contribution to the electricity grid, owners of electric vehicles can be rewarded with revenue or a reduction in their total energy costs.
Electric cars can also be used to support smart buildings and business parks that have their own microgrids powered by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy.
Mr Shearman explains: “In addition to renewable energy, vehicles can also serve as local energy storage.
“It makes the whole concept work better by helping with the fluctuations in renewable energy generation and bringing a smart building closer to net zero.”
The more cars available to vehicle-to-grid systems, the more flexible they become – and electric vehicles are definitely on the rise.
In fact, the UK government plans to end sales of all combustion engine-powered vehicles by 2035.