EV OEMs Invest in Factorial Solid State Batteries

Posted on by
Reply

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!

The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021

Posted on by
1

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!

According to the preamble to “The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021“, currently merely a “Draft Statutory Instrument”:

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:

Continue reading →

The Great Davidstow Blackout Saga

Posted on by
Reply

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:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/1464760584591843332

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:

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:

Storm Arwen Blacks Out Scotland

Posted on by
65

The United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office has officially named the first severe storm of the winter of 2021/22:

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:

https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1464187971230482443

[Edit – November 26th 22:00]

High winds speeds in Scotland have been expected, but the coast of South Devon has also been subject to gusts over 60 mph:

Here’s the latest power cut map for the north of Scotland from Scottish and Southern Electricity, showing a total of 201 “unplanned outages”:

and here is Scottish Power’s map for further south:

Continue reading →

V2G meets Project LEO at COP26

Posted on by
2

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 Announces Electric Vehicle Revolution

Posted on by
Reply

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:

Continue reading →

Rolls-Royce SMR Seeks Regulatory Approval

Posted on by
1

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.

Continue reading →

Icebreaker One Win UKRI’s MEDA Competition

Posted on by
1

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:



VW preview the ID.5 e-SUV, including V2x

Posted on by
1

Earlier today Volkswagen announced the “world premiere” of the ID.5 “electric SUV coupé” and the ID.5 GTX. According to the press release:

On the “Way to ZERO”: The new ID.5 does more than just expand the successful ID. family; the new Volkswagen launch moves the electrification of its new car fleet forward and into a new market segment. The elegant, expressive E-SUV coupé is equipped with the new ID. software version 3.0, which includes improved charging performance and voice control among other features. With the use of swarm data and latest-generation driver assistance systems, Volkswagen is also taking the next step towards automated driving…

Elegant and dynamic design, outstanding aerodynamics, extensive range. The new ID.5 and the sporty ID.5 GTX with dual-motor all-wheel drive are the new, long-range top models in the ID. family. Like all ID. models, Volkswagen’s first e-SUV coupé is based on the Volkswagen modular electric drive matrix (MEB).

Our interest is of course primarily in the (dis)charging capabilities of the new VW. We carefully selected a promotional picture that includes the charging port, albeit with the door closed. The press release states that:

With its We Charge charging system, Volkswagen offers the fastest-growing environmentally friendly system for convenient, networked and sustainable charging. The network has around 250,000 charging points across Europe. Using the standard Mode 3 cable, the e-SUV coupé can also be charged with up to 11 kW of alternating current (AC), even when it is out and about. Charging performance can reach up to 135 kW as standard at a fast-charge station.

However despite VW’s earlier hints, the press release makes no mention of any potential ability to discharge the ID.5’s traction battery! For that we have to turn to the launch video:

At 7:35 in the video Klaus Zellmer puts it this way:

We lost power, and in order to keep the lights on we now use the ID, with its battery, and it’s called bidirectional charging…

In your usual use case you would use the electricity from the grid, use it for your car to power the battery and drive around. But it can also be done the other way around, so you can also use the battery power, the electricity, to power whatever you want to power.

There’s no mention of the word “grid” however, so let’s settle on vehicle-to-load (V2L for short) for the moment shall we? Also be sure to read the (very) small print:

There is one other interesting technical feature of the ID.5 that does gets a mention in the press release:

With Car2X communication, Volkswagen is taking safety to a whole new level. Data from compatible vehicles in the Volkswagen fleet and signals from infrastructure within a radius of up to 800 metres can be locally interpreted in a fraction of a second, enabling driver alerts about dangerous areas, accidents and stationary traffic.

Add vehicle-to-infrastructure using WLANp to the ID.5’s list of capabilities as well!

Weather Forecasts to Expand National Grid Capacity?

Posted on by
Reply

In a press release yesterday National Grid Group PLC announced that:

National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) has partnered with the Met Office on an innovative weather data project to help expand capacity on the electricity transmission network for wind and solar power.

The partnership is aiming to explore the value that can be derived from utilising higher specification weather forecasts to boost capacity on the electricity overhead transmission power lines, allowing more renewable energy to flow.

Currently, the electricity transmission system is limited by the individual power rating or capacity of the circuits connecting everyone across the country and, with the growth in renewable electricity generation, power flows across the existing grid infrastructure are changing, particularly at peak periods.

Historically, standard assumptions made for weather conditions have been conservative, therefore assets have operated at ratings lower than the actual capacity. To expand capacity, the £545k project, funded through the Ofgem’s Network Innovation Allowance mechanism, looks to utilise significant advances in weather forecasting by assessing the feasibility of integrating a cloud-based weather forecasting service into NGETs present Dynamic line rating (DLR) calculation methodology.

Assessing the DLR and varying the capacity of an overhead transmission power line dynamically, depends on the conductor’s physical properties as well as environmental factors such as wind speed, wind direction, ambient temperature, solar radiation etc.  If the environmental conditions are favourable enough to cool the conductors sufficiently, more power can be pushed through the lines, relieving some of the network constraints – helping to meet the country’s energy needs.

Given that the United Kingdom’s energy needs are currently being met at great expense, let us all hope that every little helps.

Tesco and the rest of us!