As we anticipated yesterday, Storm Barra has been officially named by Met Éireann even though the remaining power cuts due to Storm Arwen have yet to be repaired:
#StormBarra has been named by @MetEireann and is forecast to bring strong winds to much of the UK and snow to northern areas on Tuesday and into Wednesday
You could argue that Toyota’s recent launch of a 100% battery, non hybrid, electric vehicle was worthy of an article on this web site, but what with one thing and another we had more important things to write about. However that has now changed!
Today, Toyota presents the world premiere of the all-new bZ4X, the first model in a new series of bZ – beyond Zero – battery electric vehicles (BEVs).
Faithful in its design and technology to its concept predecessor, revealed earlier this year, the production-ready bZ4X is the first model to be developed by Toyota entirely as a BEV. It is also the first car to be built on the company’s new dedicated BEV platform. Based on e-TNGA philosophy, this has been co-developed by Subaru and Toyota.
Incorporating the battery unit as an integral part of the chassis, beneath the vehicle floor, it gives the fundamental benefits of a low centre of gravity, excellent front/rear weight balance and high body rigidity for high levels of safety and ride and handling quality…
With a fully charged battery, expected range is more than 280 miles (depending on version, exact data to be confirmed later). The bZ4X will also offer advanced technology features, including a solar panel roof to help charge the battery while driving or parked, and third generation Toyota Safety Sense with new and improved active safety and driver assistance systems.
The bZ4X will have its European premiere on 2 December; customers who want to be among the first to obtain the new model will be able to place a reservation via the Toyota.co.uk website from 15 December.
Toyota has drawn on almost 25 years’ experience in electrified vehicle battery technology to ensure the new lithium-ion unit in the bZ4X has world-leading quality, durability and reliability. Its confidence in the technology is reflected in an extended care programme that guarantees the battery will still operate to 70 per cent of its original capacity after up to 10 years of ownership or one million kilometres driven, subject to the customer taking their vehicle to an authorised Toyota service centre for an annual health check. To ensure this guarantee could be offered, Toyota developed the battery with a target of 90 per cent of capacity retained after 10 years/240,000 km.
This level of quality and performance is supported by multiple monitoring of the battery’s voltage, current and temperature, from individual cell level. If any abnormal heat generation is detected, controls are automatically triggered. Countermeasures have been put in place to mitigate any material degradation, and there are safeguards in the manufacturing process to prevent foreign matter from entering the battery. In a Toyota first, the battery is water-cooled.
All very interesting of course but still no mention of any mechanism for discharging the bZ4X’s water cooled battery to the outside world. Until now that is! Earlier today my attention was drawn to the Toyota Global bZ4X launch video:
https://youtu.be/d9qp2eoOWCk?t=230
On board solar panels included with the bZ mean that the electricity generated can not only run the vehicle but also be used like a mobile power station in emergencies and in outdoor activities.
Which sounds an awful lot like V2L to me! Close inspection of the associated press release reveals the following information:
Roof solar panel (specially equipped vehicles)
Generates electricity equivalent to 1,800 km of driving distance per year (in-house estimate), contributing to superb cruising range. Can charge in parking lots where there are no charging stations, and solar power can be used to charge in disasters or other emergencies.
DC external power supply function (Japanese specifications)
Can connect to a power feeder to supply high-output electricity to homes and home appliances for outdoor activities, and during disasters and other emergencies.
When used with home solar power generation, solar power can supply electricity to the house in the daytime, surplus electricity can be used to recharge the vehicle via a power feeder, and electricity stored in the vehicle can be used to power the home at night.
The bZ4X is scheduled for launch in all regions from mid-2022.
Which is extremely interesting, because unlike other V2L/V2H capable EVs that have been announced recently this one seems to claim that it offers a “high-output DC” rather than a “low-output AC” feed:
However be sure to read the (very) small print. Only in Japan by the sound of it.
At the end of last month Factorial Energy issued a press release which announced that:
Factorial Energy, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation are partnering to test Factorial’s novel solid-state battery technology and its integration in Hyundai electric vehicles. Under the Joint Development Agreement, which includes a strategic investment, the companies will integrate Factorial technology at the cell, module, and system levels, perform vehicle-level integration, and co-develop specifications for manufacturing Factorial’s batteries. The announcement is Factorial’s first major strategic investment from a major automotive Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) group and deepens its existing research relationship with Hyundai.
Factorial has developed breakthrough solid-state technology that addresses key issues holding back widescale consumer adoption of electric vehicles: driving range, and safety.
Factorial’s advances are based on FEST™ (Factorial Electrolyte System Technology), which leverages a proprietary solid electrolyte material that enables safe and reliable cell performance with high-voltage and high-capacity electrodes and has been scaled in 40Ah cells that perform at room temperature. FEST™ is safer than conventional lithium-ion technology, extends driving range by 20 to 50 percent, and is drop-in compatible for easy integration into existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing infrastructure.
Earlier today Stellantis issued a press release which also announced an investment in Factorial Energy:
Stellantis N.V. and Factorial Energy announced today the signing of a joint development agreement to advance Factorial’s high-voltage traction solid-state battery technology. The agreement also includes a strategic investment from Stellantis.
“Our investment in Factorial and other highly recognised battery partners boosts the speed and agility needed to provide cutting-edge technology for our electric vehicle portfolio,” said Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares. “Initiatives like these will yield a faster time to market and more cost-effective transition to solid-state technology.”
Factorial has developed breakthrough solid-state technology that addresses key issues holding back wide-scale consumer adoption of electric vehicles: driving range and safety.
“It is a great honor to partner with Stellantis, a leading global mobility player, which has some of the most iconic auto brands in the world,” said Siyu Huang, Co-founder and CEO of Factorial Energy. “It is an incredible opportunity for us to advance the adoption of our clean, efficient and safe solid-state battery technology to the mass market.”
Stellantis announced during its EV Day program in July 2021 its target of having the first competitive solid state battery technology introduced by 2026.
One cannot help but wonder how well this exciting new battery technology will handle the modest cycling requirements of V2G technology!
I’ve spent a busy few days covering the power cuts caused across the UK by Storm Arwen. Before she arrived on the scene I intended to go into more detail about Boris Johnson’s announcement last week about “New laws to supercharge the electric vehicle revolution”. Finally the time has come to look at some of those new laws in a bit more detail!
The Secretary of State, in exercise of the powers conferred by sections 15, 16, 17 and 18 of the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018(1) (“the 2018 Act”), makes the following Regulations.
In accordance with section 18(4) of the 2018 Act, a draft of this instrument has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
The Secretary of State has consulted such persons as the Secretary of State considered appropriate in accordance with section 18(3) of the 2018 Act before making these Regulations.
PART 1 Introduction
Citation, commencement and extent 1.—(1) These Regulations may be cited as the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 and come into force on 30th June 2022. (2) These Regulations extend to England and Wales and Scotland.
To summarise, if duly enacted by Parliament the following interesting extracts from the bill will come into force on 30th June 2022. Which is approximately 7 months from now:
Today’s title refers back to a similar incident we experienced back in 2014 at our previous premises half way up Haldon Hill near Exeter. The forecast for Storm Arwen suggested lots of power cuts in lots of places. We thought we had escaped unscathed. Until the very early hours of this morning that is, when this happened:
A few minutes later this information appeared on Western Power Distribution’s power cut map:
By that time our mains power had returned, but that of 18 of our near neighbours had not.
It is now over 12 hours later, and those 18 properties are still unintentionally “off grid”:
I’ve recently returned from a bike ride around the local, somewhat soggy lanes, where I happened across a valiant 3 man WPD repair crew:
It seems that some of their South West colleagues were up country helping out in the Midlands, and they had started their current shift a mere 6 hours after finishing the previous one.
Their efforts seem to have paid off, since after returning home the WPD web site was running properly once again, to reveal this no doubt welcome information to our near neighbours:
Based on my conversation with the repair crew and subsequent poring over a map of WPD’s distribution grid here is my best estimation of what happened during the power cut in Trevivian. Firstly here’s my video of what was happening to WPD’s wires in the vicinty of Tremail in the immediate aftermath of Storm Arwen, together with a comment on the current high retail price of electricity:
After #StormArwen had subsided somewhat yesterday afternoon we took a stroll up the hill towards #Davidstow Moor to take a look at our local #OnshoreWind "power station"
Here are the sights (and sounds!) that greeted our sore eyes#LocalEnergy#NetZero
I’m not sure why it took until gone midnight, but 2 of the conductors carrying the 3 phase 11 kV supply from Tremail past Trevivian came down in the early hours of Sunday morning:
At first Tremail was amongst those cut off by the fault, but then WPD opened the air break isolators identified by green arrows and turned the power from Davidstow substation back on. After that everyone’s lights came back on apart from the properties powered by the network between the two isolating switches.
What with one thing and another it then took quite a while to repair those sections of cable and close the ABIs again! Here’s a close up of the ABI at the Tremail end of the isolated section of the local electricity distribution grid in normal operation:
and here’s a picture of it that might be more familiar to those who travel the road between Tremail and Trevivian on a regular basis:
As you can see from the forecast above, very strong winds are forecast to hit the north east coast of Scotland later today, which will inevitably lead to a large number of power cuts.
The UK Met Office has now also issued a red weather warning for Storm Arwen:
⚠️⚠️⚠️ Rare Red weather warning issued ⚠️⚠️⚠️#StormArwen will bring a spell of very strong winds to parts of northeast Scotland and northeast England
I remotely attended several sessions at the recently completed COP26 conference in Glasgow, but what with one thing and another I missed out on attending this one as it happened:
As you can already see it was organised by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN for short) and was hosted by Laura Sandys. Note in particular the part at 6:30 where Professor Malcolm McCulloch of Oxford University says that:
So the challenge is to say “How do we allow that potential problem and risk, how do we turn that around to be something that’s really a friend and an aid to the system?”
And the one thing that worries me right at the moment is that we’re seeing a huge uptake in electric vehicles over the last while, I mean it’s kind of fascinating that at the beginning of this year the most popular vehicle being sold was the Ford Focus, last three months it’s been the Tesla Model 3! That kinds of tells you what the change in our dynamics is looking at.
At the moment we’re missing a trick because most of the vehicles being sold except for a few Nissan’s and a few others don’t have vehicle-to-grid. In other words the power flows in only one direction, so all that huge amount of storage capacity that’s available on the grid, we’re talking about by the time we get to 2030 there’s enough energy in the batteries of our electric vehicles to power the UK for two days. That’s a tremendous amount of energy that’s sitting there, but if we don’t install V2G soon, really soon, that boat is going to pass and we’re going to have real trouble in trying to, or much more costly ways of doing that.
Needless to say we broadly agree with Malcolm’s analysis, and the conversation in Glasgow continued. Please watch the whole 30+ minutes, but now there is further news. The Local Energy Oxfordshire project (LEO for short) has just released a white paper authored by Origami Energy and the Low Carbon Hub catchily entitled “Vision on the inclusion of small (under 7kW) flexibility from the grid edge and its role in Future Energy System“. Please also read it from cover to cover, and note that it briefly (and belatedly!) mentions that:
In 2021, British Standards Institute as part of [its] Smart Energy Appliance programme published two standards designed to support [a] testing and certification programme to motivate greater potential for demand response from [the] residential sector.
Note also LEO’s recommendations:
Grid-edge flexibility has great potential to be the enabler of Net Zero as outlined by the “Leading the Way” FES scenario. However, t he two biggest challenges facing the inclusion of small flexibility from the grid edge into delivering Net Zero are societal participation and commercial environment. A common pillar to both challenges is the value of flexibility which only partially reflects the benefits delivered through the flexibility markets. Today, each flexibility market is monopsonistic (market dominated by one buyer), segregated and short-term (there is a lack of long term stability in the regulatory landscape). There is a need to standardise products and services across all flexibility markets to encourage greater transparency and involvement of flexibility as these flexibility markets grow.
To support the inclusion of grid-edge flexibility, the proposed recommendations include:
• To tailor the legislation and regulation to support the development of local communities who act collectively to manage their LCTs and interact with the flexibility markets and other users of the system at a single node (e.g. enabled by an iDNO) or multiple nodes.
• Create a new energy and carbon marketplace to encourage wider deployment of Smart Local Energy Systems where local generation and demand flexibility is recognised as being critical for a healthy and affluent society. The Flexible Services players are seen to add significant benefit to the local society and also provide support to the National scale economy.
• Align the energy policy, welfare policy and housing policy to deliver long-term strategy for Net Zero and beyond ensuring balanced distribution of costs and benefits associated with grid-edge flexibility and cost of energy.
Boris Johnson’s speech to the Confederation of British Industries has been in the news for other reasons, but here we’ll concentrate on his announcement about electric vehicle charging stations. According to 10 Downing Street on Monday morning:
PM to announce electric vehicle revolution
Hundreds of thousands of extra charge points in the pipeline with new laws to supercharge the electric vehicle revolution.
New homes and buildings such as supermarkets and workplaces, as well as those undergoing major renovation, will be required to install electric vehicle charge points from next year, under new legislation announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson today.
England will lead the world to mandate such building regulations, kicking off a decade of delivery in hundreds of thousands of charge points while creating further green jobs across the country.
Up to 145,000 extra charge points will be installed across England each year thanks to these regulations, in the run up to 2030 when the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will end in the UK. This builds on the over 250,000 home and workplace charge points the government has already supported to date.
With the majority of charging happening at home, this will mean people can buy new properties already ready for an electric vehicle future, while ensuring charge points are readily available at new shops and workplaces across the UK – making it as easy as refuelling a petrol or diesel car today.
As well as new homes and non-residential buildings, those undergoing largescale renovations which leaves them with over 10 parking spaces will be required to install electric vehicle charge points.
After consulting with industry, the Government will also be going further to make it easier and simpler for people to go electric, by introducing simpler ways to pay whilst travelling, such as contactless, at all new fast and rapid charge points.
We’ll come on to that consultation shortly, but here’s what Boris was intending to say to the CBI:
In a press release yesterday Rolls Royce SMR Ltd. announced that:
Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd has submitted a 470MW Small Modular Reactor (SMR) design for entry to the UK’s Generic Design Assessment (GDA) regulatory process.
The first step is to secure clearance from the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) through its initial screening process, which will confirm the Rolls-Royce SMR business is suitability qualified to enter the Office for Nuclear Regulation, Natural Resources Wales and Environment Agency’s combined GDA process.
This initial screening process reviews whether a company has the capability and capacity to successfully enter the UK GDA process. The Government evaluation process is expected to take up to four months before the regulators can begin their formal review process.
In a press release this morning Ofgem, the United Kingdom’s energy regulator, announced that:
UKRI’s £2m Modernising Energy Data Access (MEDA) competition, which saw three rounds of increasingly competitive requirements to design and build a data access solution for the energy sector, completed the beta-stage build in July 2021. Icebreaker One, the competition winners, have developed Open Energy a non-profit service that provides data search, data access control and has been designed through collaborative industry groups.
Managed by UKRI as part of the MEDA project, Icebreaker One will deliver a pilot phase of Open Energy over the next 6 months to the end of February 2022. The aim of the pilot phase is to carry out further research and development activities that will prepare the product for public launch. This phase will include developing capabilities that enable organisational and data onboarding, developing further use-case(s), and delivering an operational pilot programme.
The Open Energy initiative has already delivered value in improving visibility and access to data in the sector. It aims to act as a key enabler to innovation, help to drive down costs for consumers and support an open data landscape.
UKRI, BEIS and Ofgem are supportive of energy data sharing solutions and we will work with industry over the coming months to ensure that these solutions can operate within the energy market.
Here is Gavin Starks from Icebreaker One with a brief overview of the Open Energy initiative:
