Tag Archives: EA Tech

Will the United Kingdom Become an Electric Nation?

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Electric Nation is an OFGEM funded electric vehicle “smart charging” trial project which:

Aims to provide local electricity network operators with the tools to be able to ensure that their networks can cope with [the] massive new challenge [of local electricity networks becoming overloaded], whilst avoiding replacing cables and substations.

The always entertaining Bobby Llewellyn explains the problem with a little help from Roger Hey, Future Networks Manager of Western Power Distribution:

As Roger puts it:

The more cars that you put in a single area, the more stress that you’re going to put on. The network was never really designed to have so many things all in one place. It was designed for powering people’s homes, for cooking. It wasn’t originally designed for transportation fuel as well!

Carl Sanderson of BMW UK adds:

What happens when, let’s say, 25% of the motoring public are plugging in their car at a similar time? Are we going to see massive blackouts? Are the lights going to go out? I think it’s a key point that needs addressing.

Andy Eastlake of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership suggests a solution:

One of the challenges is energy storage, and if we’re putting a huge energy storage capability into the cars can we use that to balance the grid?

To which Bobby responds:

So what you’re talking about then is very much vehicle-to-grid, [energy] going both ways, communicating smartly, the whole development of that technology?

Andy outlines the case for “smart charging” instead of full blown V2G, but adds:

There’s a problem with electricity tariffs. We’re not allowed to have lots and lots of electricity tariffs because the perception was the market will be too complex, so that’s one of the things holding back electricity supply companies in delivering creative tariffs.

Ben Godfrey, also from WPD, tells Bobby something he didn’t already know:

Effectively for every EV we connect to the network, it’s adding an extra house.

and points out that:

The interesting thing about vehicles as well is that they follow where people go. People move from town centres in the day, which is where we have the big load, to domestic places in the evening which also mirrors the load on the electricity network. If we could use the storage built into the vehicles to move that power from cities out into domestic areas then that would replace the need for us to put in extra cables which is going to cause disruption to the network.

If we can harness vehicle-to-grid then that can save us from building any extra cables, digging up roads and causing lots of disruption.

Bobby adds:

And potentially from building new power stations. You could time shift that power to a certain extent.

All in all a remarkable good advertisement for full blown V2G at the launch of a “smart charging” trial! First things first though. Is your home currently connected to Western Power Distribution’s network?

If so and if you have or are getting an electric vehicle and if you haven’t yet taken advantage of the UK Government’s home charger grant you may well be interested in finding out more about the Electric Nation trial:

Electric Nation is seeking to recruit over 500 electric vehicle (EV) owners (including pure electric and plug-in hybrids) to take part in the largest trial of its kind. Participants will charge their cars at home using a smart charger which can manage when and how their vehicle battery charges. The findings of the trial will help electricity network operators to manage the effect of the additional load caused by charging EVs on the local electricity network. This is essential for the security of electricity networks in the future and the decarbonisation of the transport sector which is responsible for approximately 21% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

My Electric Avenue Preliminary Results Revealed

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Just in case the name is unfamiliar to you, the My Electric Avenue project has been running for a couple of years now. According to the My Electric Avenue web site:

Whilst there’s plenty of capacity to deliver power for EV charging across the UK, if the charging requirements are concentrated in small areas and during peak demand, local feeders can become overloaded. With the development of even faster charging times, this problem shows no signs of fading.

The full size and scale of the problem that EV clusters could cause will only become apparent to Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) when they are already on the network, demanding costly mitigation measures in short timescales.

EA Technology and Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution (SSEPD) are working together with partners under the Ofgem Low Carbon Networks (LCN) Fund to develop a ready-made low cost solution. EA Technology is developing an EV charge control system to balance out the charging cycles of EVs at times of network stress.

To test the system the trial is simulating a future EV network, and to do this, clusters of EVs have been ‘created’.

If all that information strikes you as being a bit on the dry side, here’s an episode of Robert Llewellyn’s “Fully Charged” show that explains the project in a more entertaining fashion!

I watched a webinar last week in which some preliminary results from the project were released, but EA Technology had a few internet connection problems due to high winds in the North of England, and the feed gave up the ghost halfway through! To rectify that they’ve made a video of the proceedings available to all and sundry, and here it is:

There’s also a page on the My Electric Avenue web site where you can download additional information.

The data referred to in the video is based on the initial results from an ongoing survey. It explains that the approximately 200 participants who each leased a Nissan LEAF were split into two roughly equal groups. The “technical” group used “smart” or “controlled” charging, whilst the “social” group simply had their EV charging activity monitored. There’s obviously much more detail available from the video and accompanying documentation, but in brief:

  • Only ~5% of people disagreed with the proposition that “EVs are easy to live with”, however
  • 117 out of 193 people “struggle to charge away from home”
  • Of those 117, 12% intend to buy their LEAF at the end of the trial and 43% intend to lease it
  • Overall 17% intend to buy their LEAF at the end of the trial and 41% intend to lease it
  • Even after the “controlled” charging trial 80% of people like to charge their car until it is full
  • Of the people on the “technical” trial, 16% disagreed with the proposition that “My electric vehicle charges sufficiently in the time available to charge”

The concluding section of the presentation points out that the sense of “community” was very important to the success of the project, with “local champions” recruiting friends and neighbours into their “cluster” of EVs a vital element of that.

The final report on the My Electric Avenue project is due to be released by De Montfort University towards the end of October 2015. In the meantime if you are in the EV business and you would like to take a quick survey yourself on the topic of “Industry Views on the Impact of Cycling Electric Vehicle Charging” then you can do so over at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y5N8TTV