Octopus and Ohme Announce a Smart Cable

Posted on March 29, 2019 by Jim

This is a piece of electric vehicle smart charging (V1G for short) news rather than directly related to vehicle-to-grid technology. It is extremely interesting nonetheless. In a press release this morning it was announced that:

Octopus Energy and Ohme are today announcing a partnership to offer Octopus Energy customers the chance to have smart charging at home – enabling them to charge any electric car when Octopus’s green electricity is cheapest.

By integrating with Agile Octopus, the UK’s only smart time-of-use tariff, the Ohme cable and app brings smart charging to any home.

Here’s the image of Ohme’s new “smart cable” that accompanied the press release:

The press release continues:

Once the cable is connected, the driver can just open up the app and enter the amount they would like to charge their car and by when, and then let Ohme manage it for them. For example: “On weekdays, charge my car battery to 100% by 7am”. Ohme then uses the Octopus Agile API to automatically deliver the right amount of electricity when it is cheapest.

By optimising their charging in this smart way, Octopus Energy and Ohme estimate that customers using Ohme in parallel with the Agile Octopus tariff could save around £300 per year on their charging costs in comparison to charging on a typical industry standard variable tariff.

The cable will cost £399, but the first 1,000 Octopus Energy customers get a special launch price of £199.

The Ohme cable is available for pre-order on the Octopus Energy web site. Whilst we wait for them to start shipping the new product, here’s an image of the Ohme app in action:

According to Ohme’s CEO, David Watson:

At Ohme we believe the future of transport is electric and that flexible home charging is the key to mass adoption. Ohme’s innovative smart charging cable is the first App-controlled, intelligent EV charger, that combined with Octopus’ smart energy tariffs, delivers real savings and environmental benefits. All you need to do is plug in and let Ohme do the rest.

I cannot help but think that the likes of Wallbox might well quibble with David’s “first app-controlled, intelligent EV charger” remark? The press release didn’t include a telephone number, but we’ll let you know Ohme’s thoughts on the matter when we manage to get hold of them.

[Edit – March 30th]

After desperately doing my due diligence I eventually managed to have a long chat with Ohme’s technical guru, Dan Hollingworth, yesterday evening. As I strongly suspected, the Ohme “smart cable” isn’t actually that smart, by V2G UK’s standards at least. It contains a microprocessor and a 4G modem, not unlike our sister company V2G EVSE’s “smart controller” except that it doesn’t optionally do WiFi, Bluetooth, 2.5 G, 3G, LTE-M and NB-IoT as well.

Ohme’s device doesn’t determine the electric vehicle (EV for short) battery pack’s state of charge by communicating with the EV through the cable. Instead it finds out that useful piece of information by using its 4G modem to communicate with assorted EV original equipment manufacturer’s (OEM for short) cloud platforms, which in turn communicate wirelessly with the EV the Ohme’s cable is plugged into using proprietary protocols.

Ohme’s cloud platform is somewhat smarter since it communicates with National Grid’s Application Programming Interface (API for short) to forecast the “carbon intensity” of the UK Grid and thus determine the “greenness” of the electricity used to charge the EV to which the “smart cable” is attached. Here’s the current output of our open source example of how to go about doing that, generated by the V2G EVSE smart controller:

Ohme’s cloud platform also determines the price of electricity on Octopus Energy’s Agile or Go tariffs by communicating with the Octopus Energy API

Ohme’s smartphone application (app for short) allows the EV’s owner to instruct Ohme’s cloud based platform how much charge they’d like in their EV battery pack by when. On the basis of all the information Ohme’s cloud based platform has acquired it then uses version 1.6 of the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP for short) to instruct the cable when and how fast to charge the EV it’s connected to. In case it’s of interest here’s our open source smart charging station simulator, based on a mildly modified clone of Thomas Volden’s OCPP 1.6 library over on GitHub:

https://github.com/V2G-Ltd/OCPP-1.6-EVSE-Demo

Does that all make perfect sense now?

Renault Starts V2G Charging Pilot Project in Utrecht

Posted on March 21, 2019 by Jim

In a press release earlier today Renault announced:

Groupe Renault, the European leader in electric vehicles, is beginning the first large-scale pilot schemes in reversible electric charging. Our alternating-current technology has the particularity of placing the reversible charger inside vehicles, so it just requires a simple, inexpensive adaptation of the existing charging terminals.

A fleet of fifteen Zoe vehicles with vehicle-to-grid charging will be introduced in Europe over the course of 2019 to develop our future offerings in reversible charging and lay the groundwork for the future standards —with our partners’ help. These pilot schemes will begin today in Utrecht (the Netherlands) in an ecosystem developed by We Drive Solar and on Porto Santo Island (in the archipelago of Madeira, Portugal) with Empresa de Electricidade da Madeira, an energy supplier. Following these, more pilot schemes will be introduced in France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark.

It looks like we’ll have to (metaphorically of course) twist someone’s arm at Renault to let us try one or more of their modified Zoes with AC V2G capability! I was at the launch in Utrecht today and spoke to a variety of representatives from Renault Netherlands and Renault France, who by and large seemed amenable to the idea of a suitably funded UK pilot project. Renault’s press release was of course accompanied by a variety of images. However I took lots of pictures of my own, and a fair few videos too. Here’s the three Zoes that were lined up in Utrecht today:

and here’s King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands driving away in one of them, accompanied by Robin Berg of We Drive Solar:

Here too is a video recording of some of the excellent entertainment at the event, provided by the Hillsback Brassband:

Invigorated by the brilliant brass section here’s one of the press release infographics that I couldn’t snap for myself. Renault’s visualisation of vehicle-to-grid technology in action:

2019 – Recharge bidirectionnelle

Charging during the day on the left. Discharging during the night on the right. Much like our very own V2G UK banner above! Renault’s press release continues:

Vehicle-to-grid charging — also called reversible charging — modulates the charging and discharging of electric-vehicle batteries in accordance with users’ needs and the grid’s supply of available electricity. Charging reaches its maximum level when the electricity supply exceeds demand, notably during peaks in production of renewable energy. But vehicles are also capable of injecting electricity into the grid during peaks in consumption. Electric vehicles can therefore serve units of temporary energy storage and become key drivers in the development of renewable energy. In this way, the electricity grid optimizes the supply of local renewable energy and reduces infrastructure costs. At the same time, customers enjoy greener, more economical consumption of electricity and are financially rewarded for serving the electricity grid.

Reversible charging will be piloted in several projects (electric ecosystems or mobility services) through seven countries and alongside various partners to lay the groundwork for Groupe Renault’s future offering. The aim is twofold: to measure large-scale feasibility and potential gains. In particular, these pilot schemes will help us:

Underline the technical and economic advantages of an onboard solution in electric vehicles

Demonstrate—in concrete terms—the value of services provided for the local and national electricity grid, such as encouraging consumption of solar and wind energy, checking the grid’s frequency or tension, and reducing infrastructure costs

Work on the regulatory frameworks of a mobile energy-storage scheme, detecting any pitfalls in it and offering concrete solutions

Establish common standards, the basic requirement for an industrial-scale roll-out.

I now have a few more videos of the event to go away and edit, but whilst those are being prepared here’s one that Renault provided earlier, illustrating both “Smart charging” and “Bidirectional smart charging”:

Volkswagen’s New eMobility Roadmap

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Jim

On the first day of V2G UK’s trip to The Netherlands I attended EVBox’s rEVolution 2019 event in Amsterdam. Here’s EVBox’s own brief overview of the event:

and here’s yours truly during a quiet interlude at the entrance to the Gashouder Westergasfabriek:

In the first of several reports from Amsterdam, here’s what Martin Römheld of Volkswagen revealed in the final keynote speech:

Here are a few of the key points from Martin’s presentation:

My smallest daughter, she’s 3 years now, so by 2090 she’s probably going to be 74. So that means this is not a far distant scenario. I know people now who are spilling their breakfast all over them who will have to live on that planet by 2090:

Martin was referring to his animation of two alternative Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs for short). RCP 2.6 on the left “assumes that global annual greenhouse gas emissions peak between 2010–2020, with emissions declining substantially thereafter”, whereas RCP 8.5 on the right “assumes that global GHG emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century”.

For VW I can tell you, and I think you can read that from the papers and the news currently they’re really doing a paradigm shift. The top management is really turning around the company big time. The “dieselgate” that Roger mentioned was definitely a facilitator in that. Something had to happen, and it’s really happening now. It caused a lot of fear. It caused a lot of movement, but it’s absolutely necessary.

Volkswagen’s “new paradigm” includes a “commitment to the climate goals of the Paris Agreement“.

Here you can see the greenhouse gas emissions by different sectors. I’ve singled out the two that we have an influence on. We are part of the industry, so within the value chain and the production of the vehicle we have a big influence on that section, and of course with our products and the services we provide to our customers we have a big impact on the other 14%, the emissions while the vehicle are being used.

Moving on from VW’s aspirations to some engineering, Martin pointed out that:

The question is “How much energy is contained in one litre of diesel?”. Very few people know that. It’s about 10 kWh, so 6 litres of diesel are the equivalent of 60 kWh of energy. So how far will that takes us? With a diesel car, if you have a moderate driving style, it will take you about 100 km… With an EV you go four times that far. And that’s the discussion we have to take. It’s not a question about how much more electricity do we consume, it’s a question about how much less energy do we consume.

When it comes to reducing the energy consumption of “personal mobility” by a factor of four, here are Volkswagen Group’s plans. Firstly an overview of their “Modularer E-Antriebs-Baukasten” (MEB) Platform:

which will form the basis for their forthcoming I.D. series of electric vehicles:

Much like Nissan and Renault, VW also plan to go into the energy business with the Elli brand:

They even intend to supply their own wallboxes to charge their forthcoming range of electric vehicles:

Do you suppose that Elon Musk is losing any sleep over the nascent competition to Tesla emanating from the Old World?

The Lights Go Out Again at V2G Towers

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Jim

Our lights went out at 11:33 this morning, together with our telephone and “fibre to the premises” BT broadband. Fortunately we have backup for the latter two in the form of the by now ubiquitous mobile phones and this Huawei E5885L 4G mobile WiFi hotspot:

The cause of the problem was an 11 kV cable that had become detached from an insulator and was dangling lower than designed:

Initially we were one of 141 properties without power:

By 12:20 our power came back on since WPD’s engineers had arrived and isolated a small section of their distribution grid just up the hill from here leaving just 6 properties on the edge of Davidstow Moor without mains electricity:

They had their power restored somewhat later, at 13:50:

We really must persuade our current landlord to let us install a 3 phase supply and full strength V2G technology to enable us to weather such storms much more smoothly in our converted barn.

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Monthly Archives: March 2019

Octopus and Ohme Announce a Smart Cable

Renault Starts V2G Charging Pilot Project in Utrecht

Volkswagen’s New eMobility Roadmap

The Lights Go Out Again at V2G Towers