The 361 Energy Fair is back in Barnstaple on September 29th. The 2024 event starts at 10 AM in the Pannier Market with an introduction by Ian Roome, the newly elected Liberal Democrat MP for North Devon.
To give you a better idea of what to expect, here’s a video with extracts from previous 361 energy fairs:
For the first time this year’s fair includes a series of talks on a variety of topics. Our very own Jim Hunt will be giving a presentation on the topic of “An introduction to V2x, making greater use of EV batteries”, and the emphasis will be on vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-building rather than fully fledged vehicle-to-grid.
The event includes exhibitions from a variety of local electric car dealers, and several of the EVs are V2x enabled. I suspect the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N will attract a lot of interest. Here’s Jack Scarlett’s review of “the most engaging electric driver’s car yet?” for the Fully Charged Show:
Also on display in the Pannier Market will be the Volkswagen ID. Buzz electric “surf bus”…
the Kia EV6…
and the Ford E-Transit van:
Yesterday proved to be rather a damp and blustery day, but we managed to reach the Barnstaple Pannier Market after suffering only a mild sprinkling of rain. This is the sight that greeted us:
The presentations were taking place in the Studio KIND gallery in the Corn Store at the far left corner of that picture, where it quickly became apparent that things were running considerably behind schedule! That meant we got to hear Paul Rogers from National Energy Action talking about “Heating your home with a Heat Pump”:
Followed by Frank Benbow from 361 Energy CIC dispelling some of the myths about “Electric vehicles and charging”:
Things were becoming a bit rushed by the time I got up to speak, but here’s yours truly swiftly running through the differences between the “AC” and “DC” varieties of V2x technology with an image of the forthcoming Renault 5 E-Tech and our prototype single phase AC vehicle-to-home wallbox:
I ended up skipping some of the more technical bits of my presentation, but you can download the whole thing here. The other presentations are available for download from the 361 Energy CIC web site.
By the time the presentations were over many of the EVs had already departed, but I did manage to discuss the Hyundai Ioniq 5N with a representative of Devonshire Motors. Apparently a few have been sold in the West Country, but I have yet to see or hear one of them out on the road!
Now I cannot help but wonder when the Ioniq 5 and other Hyundai EVs will be available in the UK, equipped with fully fledged vehicle-to-grid technology?