The first Electric Defender started worked work at the Eden Project near St Austell in Cornwall this summer in an inaugural real world trial of its capabilities. Unveiled at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, the Land Rover Electric Defender is a pioneering research project into the electrification of an all-terrain vehicle.
The project forms part of Land Rover’s overall sustainability objectives which have included the move to aluminium platforms in the latest all-new Range Rover and Range Rover Sport as well as the forthcoming Range Rover hybrid products. The innovative 4×4 is a rolling laboratory to develop new ideas, and investigate electrification in a real-world environment. A fleet of six vehicles will be placed with organisations where their performance can be assessed.
Here’s what both the Electric Defender and The Eden Project look like:
An Electric Land Rover Defender poses for a picture at the Eden Project
The press release also reported the opinions of senior managers involved in the project. Jeremy Greenwood, Principal Engineer on the Electric Defender project, said that:
The car has been modified so it now includes a second battery. That will allow it to work a full day at the Eden Project, but also improves weight distribution and stability. In addition, we’ve linked the land-train’s air brakes to the foot pedal of the Land Rover, enhancing safety.
Gus Grand, Climate Change Lead for the Eden Project, said:
We’re very pleased to be working with Land Rover on this exciting project. It will be a great talking point for our visitors and proves that electric vehicles can be every bit as tough and rugged as their fossil fuel counterparts, while being much quieter, cheaper to run and with zero emissions at the point of use.
Here’s a video of an Electric Defender in action, driven by Robert Llewellyn of “Fully Charged” fame. Feel free to ignore the Ecotricity advert at the end if you so wish:
I wonder if Jaguar Land Rover have any plans for retro-fitting V2H and/or V2G technology to an Electric Defender in their R&D pipeline?
Vehicle to grid technology is making money at last, and it’s mainstream news too. In a press release earlier today NRG Energy said that:
Joined by government and industry leaders, the University of Delaware and NRG Energy are celebrating an important milestone for its eV2g project today: becoming an official resource of PJM Interconnection and proving for the first time that electric vehicle-to-grid technology can sell electricity from electric vehicles (EVs) to the power grid.
Cameras were on hand to record those celebrations, and here is the resulting video:
According to NRG’s press release, Delaware Governor Jack Markell said that:
Moving innovative ideas out of the classroom and into the marketplace is critical to growing our economy. The partnership between NRG and University of Delaware perfectly illustrates the potential for research institutions to spur economic development
whilst NRG Executive Vice President Denise Wilson said that:
This demonstrates that EVs can provide both mobility and stationary power while helping making the grid more resilient and ultimately generating revenue for electric vehicle owners.
and University of Delaware President Patrick Harker said that:
I thank all of the industry and policy leaders who have come together around a project that incorporates clean transportation, stable energy and profitable sustainability. And I thank Prof. Willett Kempton and his fellow scientists for leading the way. It might be a few more years before a grid-integrated vehicle sits in every American driveway, but I’m excited to continue the journey.
Personally I suspect it might be a few more years before a grid-integrated vehicle sits in any American driveway, let alone in any British driveway. One of the reasons I say that is covered next in the press release. NRG briefly mention the raison d’être of V2G:
For grid operators, the technology serves as an innovative new approach to energy storage. It has the potential to balance the power provided by intermittent renewable resources such as wind and solar. Energy storage, such as large-scale batteries or those in a fleet of vehicles, can take the wind’s power generated at night and store it to use when demand is higher.
Whilst that potential may well exist, here’s the rub when it comes to reality. Michael J. Kormos, who is senior vice president of operations at PJM pointed out that:
PJM changed rules for participation in the regulation service market to decrease the minimum amount of power needed to participate and we implemented new rules that recognize and compensate faster, more accurately responding resources, such as batteries. We knew that by doing so would attract innovation and would find potential for energy storage or other technologies. We’re glad to be a part of this project and hope that this inspires continued innovation among our partners and others in the industry.
How many other “grid operators” like PJM, whether in the United States or over here in Europe, are going to be willing to change their rules and lower their thresholds for entry into wholesale electricity markets to include an EV sat in a driveway overnight, or even a fleet of 15 Mini EVs as in this project? If the answer turns out to be “none”, then who’s going to do the necessary aggregation and sit in the middle between the EVs in every driveway and the PJM’s of this world?
Be all that as it may, and no doubt having read the same press release as me, the New York Times put a slightly different spin on the story. They point out that:
The scale of this project, using 15 two-passenger Mini E models, donated by BMW, is indeed minuscule compared with the task of keeping the grid system that serves two-thirds of North America in balance, making sure that supply matches demand as precisely as possible.
The Delaware idea is tiny but promising. If we can get our electric vehicles to do more than just be electric vehicles, it will be very well received.
It would certainly be well received by your humble author, although at this juncture in history I cannot help but wonder which of all the currently competing international standards will ultimately ensure that all the electrical, mechanical and financial components of a future smart grid, produced by a plethora of international vendors, will all happily co-exist. There are still a long list of hurdles to be jumped before the realisation of Professor Kempton’s vision of:
[Seeing] the electric car and the wind machine as complementary tools for a low-carbon energy system.
is turned into electrical, mechanical and financial reality.
The very first British built LEAF electric vehicle has recently rolled off the production line at Nissan’s plant in Sunderland. British Prime Minister David Cameron was there to celebrate the event, as were some cameras. Here’s what one of them recorded:
Commenting on Nissan’s £420 million investment Mr. Cameron said that:
This plant, all of the people who work here, the cars being produced behind me, are the best possible rebuke to those who say “In Britain we can’t design things any more, we can’t make things any more or we can’t export things any more. You’ve shown here at Nissan in Sunderland that we can, and we can do it brilliantly.
As the reporter points out:
The new LEAF boasts over 100 improvements and uses an advanced lithium-ion battery, which is also manufactured at the Sunderland plant. Updates include an increased driving range of 123 miles or 199 km, and the ability to recharge in half the time of the first generation LEAF.
More than 54,000 LEAFs have been sold worldwide. Nissan says the new LEAF is the first in a number of pure electric vehicles that it plans to launch over the next few years.
Unfortunately no mention was made of the “vehicle to home” technology that Nissan have been trialling back home in Japan, let alone fully fledged V2G. Maybe Mr. Cameron will announce some significant Great British investments in the design of such esoteric devices in the near future?
The Economist published an article on their web site last week entitled “End of the Electric Car?”. According to the Economist’s columnist “Babbage”:
A breakthrough in engine design has made liquid nitrogen an even more attractive alternative than the lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars. An invention made by an independent British engineer called Peter Dearman dispenses with the costly heat exchanger that is needed to vaporise the liquid nitrogen quickly.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, the leading standards-setting and registration body for the profession, was so impressed with the Dearman Engine Company’s developments that it has now established a working group comprising engineers, academics, government officials and industry leaders, to explore ways of exploiting liquid-nitrogen technology.
An aspect of the story that the Economist unaccountably failed to mention can instead be found on the web site of the Liquid Air Energy Group, where Tim Fox, Head of Energy and Environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers is quoted as saying:
We’re coming out of the cave blinking on this one and we’re only just getting an inkling of how great the energy benefits of liquid air could be.
which the Liquid Air home page follows up with:
Cryogenic liquids are widely used in industry already, but their adoption as an energy vector is only just beginning. A number of British organisations, research teams and Universities are already developing ways to use liquefied air (or liquid nitrogen, its major constituent) as a zero emission energy storage medium and transport fuel.
Note the emphasis on energy storage rather than transport fuel? The Economist story has thus far attracted 422 comments, only one of which mentioned energy storage. That was one I made myself! I did get one recommendation for it, so perhaps at least one other Economist reader understands what I was on about? Heading back to the Liquid Air Energy Group home page, they share the following video:
The first minute or so is spent on the Dearman Engine, but the video then goes on to point out that:
Liquid air could also have helped to keep the lights on
and then takes a look at a:
Liquid air pilot plant near Slough [that] uses up excess electricity from power stations and wind farms when consumer demand is low. It’s cheap energy storage that could reduce the need for so many power stations.
As I pointed out to the Economist, I’m afraid that cheap energy storage that’s already connected to the UK National Grid is a concept that gets me a lot more excited than speculation about liquid nitrogen pumps at motorway service stations.
This news is of great interest to us here at V2G Limited because not only that, but also:
Other companies involved will supply the batteries (Air Lithium (Lyoyang) Co. Ltd.) and charging by the local utility. The utility will fund construction of a charging and battery swap station network as well as paying for the batteries.
The batteries will serve a dual use for grid stabilization, or Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology. The batteries will be financed by charges to electricity customers because of this dual use. So, in addition to this being the largest EV sale ever announced, the project is also effectively the largest scale trial of the use of EV batteries for V2G.
The comments on the story clarify that:
The greedy utilities don’t want to share [the] value with consumers – that’s the only problem with V2G.
To that I would add the rider that (over here in Europe at least) V2G technology isn’t ready for “prime-time” just yet for another reason. The standards are still being developed apart from anything else.
Note that at the end of his report Tom also discloses that he is:
