Tag Archives: Francisco Carranza

Nissan Announce 1000 V2G Installations in the UK

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Since it mentions “1000 V2G installations” and comes with a nice picture of a 2018 LEAF plugged in to a V2G charging station Nissan’s announcement of its “e4Future” project’s successful entry in the recent Innovate UK V2G funding competition deserves an article of its very own:

2018-LEAF-V2G

Whilst it is certainly connected to the vehicle the charging station doesn’t seem to be connected to the grid! Regarding their successful bid Nissan say that:

Nissan and its partners welcome the announcement by Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy minister Richard Harrington to award £9.8m for a Vehicle-to-Grid demonstrator project.

The project foundation is for a large-scale demonstrator targeting 1000 Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) installations that will evaluate a commercial offer to electric vehicle fleet customers. The chargers will be controlled by an aggregator and data will be collected to understand the technical characteristics of vehicle to grid charging for both the vehicles and the electricity networks.

A consortium, led by Nissan, will bring expertise from across the whole Vehicle-to-Grid value chain: V2G infrastructure/aggregator provider Nuvve, the energy community represented by National Grid, two Distribution Network Operators (DNOs); UK Power Networks and Northern Powergrid, with varied grid infrastructure. The research and analysis activities will be supported by Newcastle University and Imperial College London.

Vehicle-to-Grid technology and this project will leverage Nissan’s brand commitment to Nissan Intelligent Mobility to transform the way people drive and live, creating a more exciting and sustainable future.

Once again V2G charging station manufacturers are conspicuous by their absence from the list of Nissan’s collaborators, and there is no label on the white charging station displayed above. Nissan also provide the following bullet points summarising the e4Future project:

  • In January 2018, OLEV and BEIS announced that 21 projects (8 feasibility studies, 5 collaborative research and development projects, and 8 real-world V2G trial projects) were to receive funding of £30m to develop the business proposition and core technology around V2G, and demonstrate those with large scale trials. The projects involve more than 50 industrial partners and research organisations from both the Energy and Automotive sector, marking the largest and most diverse activities on V2G in the world, and trialling more than 2700 vehicles across UK.
  • The V2G projects represent a significant step towards the transition to a low carbon transportation and a smart energy system. Allowing EVs to return energy to the Power Grid when parked and plugged for charging, will increase Grid resilience, allow for better exploitation of renewable sources and lower the cost of ownership for EV owners, leading to new business opportunities and clear advantages for EV users and energy consumers.

Amongst other things Nissan’s Managing Director of Nissan Energy at Nissan Europe, Francisco Carranza, said that:

Our EVs can be plugged into the grid and support the transmission and distribution companies in making the UK grid more sustainable and more stable. The increase of electric vehicles penetration, the introduction of more and more distributed generation and storage and the overall increase in renewable energy penetration should be done smartly.

To ensure Nissan plays a wider role in the advancement and protection of our cities, our electric V2G-ready vehicles will be used as clean mobile energy units.

Nissan has also reiterated its bold mission to offer customers free power for their EVs. V2G introduction will change the rules of the game and make energy cheaper for everyone.

The press release also contains a long list of quotes from Nissan’s collaborators on the project. Let’s take a look at this one from Myriam Neaimeh of Newcastle University:

The Government’s announcement will be a real game changer as we move towards decarbonising the grid.

This will be the first, large scale demonstration of vehicle to grid technology anywhere in the world and crucially, this project brings together all the key players for the first time – a giant of the automotive industry with energy providers, infrastructure experts and academics – so we can work together to really make this happen. It’s a really exciting time and fantastic that Newcastle University has been involved right from the beginning.

I still cannot help but wonder who will be manufacturing the all important V2G capable charging stations that will be installed as part of the e4Future project, and what de facto or international standards they will comply with?

Nissan launches “Nissan Energy Solar” for the UK

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In a press release today Nissan announced “Nissan Energy Solar“:

Nissan Energy Solar is the all-in-one solution that combines world-class residential solar panels with energy storage system to make the most of UK homes.

The solution has been designed to allow UK homeowners to reduce their energy bills and get more independence from the grid, allowing them to live more sustainably.

Traditionally, solar energy has been used to power home appliances during the day, but now with Nissan Energy Solar householders can collect and store the excess energy from their solar panels and use it during the night – even to charge their Nissan LEAF and e-NV200 – and on cloudy days.

Nissan launches Nissan Energy Solar: the ultimate all-in-one energy solution for UK homes

Nissan launches Nissan Energy Solar: the ultimate all-in-one energy solution for UK homes

The accompanying image shows an xStorage static battery on the garage wall, but no electric vehicle is to be seen. No mention is made of discharging said absent electric vehicle, so Nissan’s new offering only delivers part of the functionality implied by our artist’s impression of our SaMDES project displayed at the top of the page.

The press release continues:

Francisco Carranza, Managing Director, Nissan Energy, Nissan Europe says ‘Solar panels have become the world’s fastest growing source of new energy and we’re thrilled to launch Nissan Energy Solar in the UK. Over 880,000 UK homes already have solar panels installed and they are seeing the benefits every day, from decreasing electricity bills to increasing property values.’

‘Nissan Energy Solar is just one step in supporting our commitment to investing in innovative energy solutions for a more sustainable future and intelligent way of living.’

The new product also includes a home energy management system that will allow users to control how and when they want to use their energy in real time as well as making the entire energy system more efficient and sustainable. The system reduces energy costs and carbon footprint for homeowners significantly, by automating energy flows, purposefully utilizing solar production peaks and storage capacities.

Nissan Energy Solar solution will start at £3881**.

Here’s the small print:

**Includes the supply and installation of a six panel solar system, Home Energy Management system, and VAT at 5%.

The xStorage unit shown in the garage obviously adds to that price, as would upgrading to the “most efficient” or “sleek integrated” solar PV panels. The product web site merely states “On sale soon” and provides no additional pricing information as yet.

Static and Mobile Distributed Energy Storage Launched At Long Last

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Our roadmap didn’t call for this announcement just yet, but on Autumn 2017 budget day Philip Hammond, the Great British Chancellor of the Exchequer, had this to say:

The next day Nissan’s Francisco Carranza made an interesting announcement on Twitter:

In a bit more detail, Nissan announced:

Nissan Motor Parts Center in Europe is the first company in the Netherlands to make its roof available to others for the production of sustainable energy on a large scale. The electricity generated is sufficient for the power consumption of 900 households. The first section becomes operational at the end of February. The project will be fully completed in May.

With the installation of this immense solar roof, Nissan is taking a further step toward its strategy focusing on Intelligent Mobility, with sustainable energy as one of its cornerstones.

“This project is perfectly suited to Nissan’s endeavors to make mobility smarter and more sustainable,” said Koen Maes, managing director Nissan Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg). “That’s why we are working on sustainable energy production and on projects such as energy storage in used batteries – vehicles which return energy to the network and car sharing. The solar roof is one of the cornerstones.”

That’s pretty much the way we see things too, and after a couple of false starts over the years the team here at V2G UK decided to accelerate our plans:

Here are some other things that have been happening on Twitter over recent days:

In case it’s not yet obvious to you, our Static and Mobile Distributed Energy Storage project roadmap includes rolling out just the right sort of V2G capable electric vehicle charging station for our purposes. My personal Twitter profile reads as follows:

I’ve been programming computers since the late 60s. We had to build our own! Now what can I program next? Will I have to build it first?

It looks as though the answer to that question is YES!

Meanwhile the V2G UK Twitter profile concludes:

A friendly local neighbourhood energy market would also be nice!

Are we going to have to build that too?