Electric vehicles (EVs) have great potential to serve as a distributed, flexible asset, but there’s one main problem: they are owned by regular consumers who have no obligation to let their utility choose when they can charge, or operate them as a virtual power plant.
Electric vehicles (EVs) can actually put more net power onto the grid than they take off during peak times, but it all depends on customer buy-in and participation.
William Goldsmith, Global Head of Grid Services for ev-energy, sat down with Mike Casey, president and founder of Tigercom and co-host of Renewable Energy World’s This Week in Cleantech podcast in the EV Zone at DISTRIBUTECH International 2024 to discuss EVs, virtual power plants, and lessons learned.
Goldsmith said.” “If we can get around 25% of people to upgrade from managed charging to bidirectional where the vehicle is able to put power back onto the grid, then actually at these peak times, the net EVs will be putting more power onto the grid than they’re taking off, which really makes them the kind of ultimate grid asset,”
One part of the solution, Goldsmith argues, is adopting one-directional smart charging or active managed charging to reduce peak demand by as much as 50%. Going even further, bi-directional charging can actually balance out the net energy on the grid.
Utilities don’t have the luxury of waiting around for someone to fix the problem for them – unmanaged EV charging could devastate grids as EV adoption increases. Building the infrastructure necessary to meet EV charging demand is costly, expensive, and complex.
