Tag Archives: Honda

Honda and Moixa Announce V2G Pilot Project

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According to a Honda press release yesterday:

Honda is installing five bi-directional electric vehicle charging points at Islington Town Hall in London, in partnership with smart charging specialists, Moixa. The initiative will help Islington Council electrify its entire vehicle fleet; part of its efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030.

This is the first project resulting from the collaboration between Honda and Moixa, which was announced at Geneva Motor Show in 2019. The strategic partnership forms a significant part of Honda’s Electric Vision strategy to deliver industry-leading innovation through a portfolio of energy management products and services in Europe.

The bi-directional vehicle-to-grid (V2G) chargers incorporate Moixa’s GridShare smart software, which optimises EV battery charging when grid power is cheapest and cleanest. The software can also aggregate groups of plugged-in EVs to provide battery power to the grid when it is most expensive and carbon intensive. When EVs are plugged in to all the chargers, the smart technology can provide enough energy to power the base load of Islington Town Hall.

The press release was accompanied by an image showing a CCS connector plugged into the front of an anonymous vehicle with a Honda badge:

However a Moixa press release about the Islington project had a somewhat different emphasis:

At Moixa, we’ve hit the ground running in 2020, unveiling a new smart EV charging project to optimise Islington Council’s fleet at the town hall. This is an exciting first step in our partnership with Honda, to deploy smart EV charging and management solutions across Europe.

We’re working with Honda to support Islington Council achieve its ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ) standard across its fleet of 500+ vehicles. The council’s goal is to electrify its entire fleet, cutting 1,400 tonnes of dangerous carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions every year. This project will reduce harmful air pollution, save money for essential services and help Islington achieve its 2030 net-zero carbon emissions target.

and a rather different image:

That looks suspiciously like a CHAdeMO connector plugged into the front of a Nissan e-NV200 van, with Simon Daniel and Chris Wright from Moixa looking on in the background!

According to Chris, who is Moixa’s Chief Technology Officer:

The EV revolution will put millions of ‘batteries on wheels’ on our roads in the next decade. By using AI-driven charging technology, we can intelligently manage these fleets of batteries, securing lowest-cost charging and highest-impact carbon savings. Our project with Honda and Islington shows what is possible and provides a blueprint for all large organisations to follow.

Whilst according to Honda Motor Europe’s Project Leader of Energy Management,
Jørgen Pluym:

As the shift towards electrification accelerates, we must continue to innovate with projects like these – helping to drive awareness and uptake of charging solutions and advanced vehicle-to-grid technologies. Honda is committed to promoting sustainable future energy management in Europe, and this project in Islington represents an important part of our vision for future energy solutions.

It looks to me as if Islington Council already possesses one or more Nissan e-NV200’s, but I suspect they will have to wait quite a while for a V2G enabled Honda, especially if it’s vans that they’re after!

Is Hitachi’s V2G Charging Station Really “Unique”?

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We pose that question because Mitsubishi Motors’ press release certainly makes it sound that way!

Hitachi Europe Ltd., Mitsubishi Motors and ENGIE have demonstrated a pioneering project to explore the potential for electric vehicles to act as a means of energy storage for an office building. For this demonstration, the consortium linked the first vehicle to everything (V2X) charger to ENGIE’s office building in Zaandam.

Hitachi’s innovative V2X Charger is the first recharger that cannot only recharge an electric car but can also discharge the energy back into the building/grid providing different flexibilities including kW, ΔkW, kWh and VAR. Moreover, it is possible to connect solar panels and external storage directly to the recharger, allowing a much more efficient electricity supply to buildings.

That all sounds as though Hitachi’s “innovative V2X Charger” is just the thing we need for our V2G “Living Lab” here in sunny South West England. Our “artist’s impression” of the concept is displayed above. As you can easily see it involves most of the buzz words from the press release, including V2H, V2G, Solar PV and “external storage”. It’s also 5 years old, which means we’ve done a lot of research into the necessary technology!

External storage and vehicle-to-building is obviously old hat. We’ve personally tested technology that does both those things at the University of Aston:

EBRI-eNV200

However the EBRI V2G pilot project didn’t incorporate “solar panels” so let’s take a look at another recent press release shall we? This one is from the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands:

Electric vehicles and solar power systems are fundamentally direct current (DC) in nature, so conversion to AC leads to unnecessary conversion steps and losses. And two separate DC–AC inverters are required, increasing the cost and size of the power electronics.

Why not use a single integrated converter that charges the electric vehicle from the solar power system on DC? That is what Mouli worked on during his PhD research. Based on Mouli’s doctoral research, TU Delft has developed a quick charger together with the Power Research Electronics and Last Mile Solutions companies which can charge cars directly with electricity from solar panels.

The TU Delft “quick charger” looks like this:
Gautham_Charger_500pix

Delving further back into the mists of time last year we discussed Honda’s “Power Manager Concept” which looks like this:

honda-power-manager-800

which is presumably based on their current Power Manager technology, which looks like this:

PowerManager-1024

According to Honda:

Power Manager Concept works by aggregating and distributing energy to and from the grid, solar panel-equipped homes or workplaces, and electric vehicles.

Electricity is received into the system from the grid or is generated by the solar panels and can be used to power and heat the building as well as to charge the EV. While the EV is plugged in, the energy can be stored and used at home or sold back to the grid, potentially generating value for EV owners.

Hitachi’s new offering evidently isn’t unique in that regard either then! Here’s their infographic of the ENGIE installation:

Hitachi-Mitsubishi

That makes it clear as a bell that they’re not doing pukka vehicle-to-grid yet either. Based on that image they also haven’t got any “static” battery storage installed at ENGIE yet.

We reached out to Hitachi and Mitsubishi, and whilst both companies have been very helpful we still don’t have a photograph of the equipment installed at ENGIE to show you. Hitachi point out that “the PV/Battery inverter functionality is the unique aspect of our charger”, but it’s still not clear to us in what way Hitachi’s claim to offer “the first vehicle to everything (V2X) charger” is justified. That being the case we have a suggestion to make. Perhaps Hitachi could let us test one of their new units at our V2G Living Lab just outside Camelford in Cornwall. Then perhaps we could swiftly establish for ourselves the veracity of the claims of Mitsubishi Motors’ marketing department?

 

[Edit – April 4th]

Hitachi Europe have pointed me at this Dutch language press release from ENGIE which includes an image of their charging station in action:

ENGIE-Outlander-V2G

Honda Research V2G Technology in Europe

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Honda have just announced in a press release that:

Honda has invested in advanced bi-directional charging technology at its European R&D site in Offenbach, Germany, which is helping to balance demand and store energy more efficiently across the facility. The new charging system incorporates renewable energy generation, and is a test bed for hardware that will be available to private households in the future.

The technology installation in Germany follows the debut of the domestic Honda Power Manager Concept at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show in September. The concept previewed a fully-integrated energy transfer, which takes power from the grid and can return stored energy from electric vehicle (EV) batteries – through ‘Vehicle-to-Grid’ or ‘V2G’ technology. This latest trial installation at Honda’s Offenbach site applies the same principles on a larger scale.

Here’s how Honda’s new bi-directional V2G capable charging station looks, albeit not in situ in Offenbach by the looks of it!

Honda installs new bi-directional charging technology at European R&D centre

Honda installs new bi-directional charging technology at European R&D centre

According to Jörg Böttcher, Vice President of Honda R&D Europe:

With the installation of the latest bi-directional charging technology at our R&D site in Germany, we are adding the next technology to our Smart Company project, which will further enhance our research activity in the field of zero-emission society and future mobility.

Here at V2G UK we have come to associate the word “Honda” with “hydrogen“, although Honda did take part in a V2G trial in the United States back in 2013. Here in Europe in 2017 they point out that:

With the help of the bi-directional hardware and with the technology of The Mobility House, Honda aims to optimise energy management at its European R&D campus, maximising the use of renewable solar power in particular. The project is testing the interaction, compatibility and power flow between specific electrical components, including the renewable energy cells and the EV batteries. The installation represents a collaboration between Honda R&D Europe, energy service provider The Mobility House and Swiss technology company EVTEC.

The investment in the bi-directional energy transfer technology further enhances the world’s most advanced public charging station for plug-in vehicles, which was launched at Honda R&D Europe in summer 2017. Its state-of-the-art 940V capability can deliver up to 150kW of energy, enabling as many as four vehicles to charge simultaneously with different types of connectors. Since its installation in June, the EV charging station has supplied power for 447 charge sessions and has saved 3.87 tonnes of CO2.

Here’s a video from The Mobility House explaining their vision of a future “V2G enabled” world:

https://youtu.be/qGtCClE4tcY

There’s more information on that topic in a press release from EVTEC which doesn’t seem to be available online at the moment. In slightly stilted English the Swiss company explain that:

With the growing importance of electric mobility, the two worlds of energy and mobility are merging. The closer this connection becomes, the more importance gain intelligent technologies that ensure this development secures a sustainable future. Such a technology is Vehicle-to-Grid, in short “V2G”. What is behind this term, is the intelligent integration of electric vehicles in the energy system and markets.

This advantage is well known to Honda, where the V2G technology is already in use today: with the help of a bidirectional charging solution, the company aims to optimize energy management at its European R & D campus in Offenbach. Within the framework of a comprehensive project over the last 12 month, the interaction of various energy components – from vehicle battery to photovoltaic system – is being tested here.

According to EVTEC co-founder and CEO Markus Kramis:

A reliable, precise, and fast acting bi-directional charger is the necessary base for every V2G application, like peak shaving and energy optimization.

All in all that EVTEC charging station sounds like just the sort of thing we need to try out at V2G Towers over here in North Cornwall, located in a distant corner of sunny South West England amongst an impressive array of large scale solar PV and onshore wind “farms”!

The same may well apply to Honda’s Power Manager mentioned above, which was announced at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September. According to a Honda press release once again:

Its all-new Power Manager Concept, a fully-integrated energy transfer system, is designed to incorporate electric vehicles into a smart power grid. It enables the collection and distribution of electricity between the grid, homes and businesses and electric vehicles, to intelligently balance demand and efficient storage of energy. Honda will apply its Power Manager technology as part of a smart grid pilot scheme in the west of France.

Honda-Power-Manager

Power Manager Concept works by aggregating and distributing energy to and from the grid, solar panel-equipped homes or workplaces, and electric vehicles.

Electricity is received into the system from the grid or is generated by the solar panels and can be used to power and heat the building as well as to charge the EV. While the EV is plugged in, the energy can be stored and used at home or sold back to the grid, potentially generating value for EV owners.

The Power Manager Concept system can help to stabilise the grid at times of either short or surplus supply, as well as representing a revenue opportunity for EV owners.

That sounds like just the sort of thing that Western Power Distribution needs to help stabilise the electricity distribution grid in our neck of the woods, which is currently heavily “constrained”:

WPD-NoCapacity

Do you suppose that we could possibly persuade Honda to apply its Power Manager technology as part of a smart grid pilot scheme here in the south west of England too?

Honda Joins Delaware Vehicle to Grid Project

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Earlier this year we reported that the University of Delaware were running a pilot project in which a fleet of BMW Minis were actually earning money by providing a useful service to PJM Interconnection‘s electricity grid over the pond in North America.

Now comes news that Honda are taking part in the self same project. According to their press release:

Honda has joined a demonstration project for experimental vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology aimed at providing a potentially valuable energy storage resource to the nation’s electrical grid while providing for more cost-effective ownership of plug-in electric vehicles.

The Honda technology builds off of the research conducted by the University of Delaware and now supported by NRG Energy, Inc.  NRG and the University of Delaware, through their eV2g joint venture, came online early in 2013 with the world’s first revenue-generating vehicle-to-grid project, demonstrating the controls, regulatory requirements, and market participation rules for selling energy storage from vehicles into the PJM Interconnection Regulation Market. Honda is supplying an Accord Plug-In Hybrid with added V2G capabilities to the University’s Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus to jointly investigate the potential of this technology to benefit the electrical grid, vehicle owners and society.

There were of course also a number of quotes from senior managers of the companies involved. Steven Center, vice president of the Environmental Business Development Office of American Honda Motor Co., Inc said that:

This technology has the potential to support both a cleaner and more efficient power grid and a more positive ownership experience for EV customers. With V2G technology, a network of PEVs becomes essentially a distributed energy storage system. It makes for an even stronger value equation for plug-in vehicles, with benefits for both the community and the vehicle user.

Willett Kempton, professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and Research Director of the University of Delaware’s Center for Carbon-Free Power Integration said that:

The participation of global automakers like Honda will help demonstrate and refine the technology. The University of Delaware has been developing the technology so that vehicle batteries can be used not only for mobility but also for grid services.  It is a big step toward a future with widespread availability of the technology to have Honda join our demonstration with their V2G-capable car.

Finally Denise Wilson, NRG Executive Vice President and President, New Businesses said that:

As the U.S. adds more intermittent resources to the grid, finding a lower cost energy storage technology that also benefits electric vehicle drivers is a great opportunity. We see this demonstration by Honda as an important step in the development of vehicle to grid technology.

Much the same sort of sentiments apply here in the UK as we too “add more intermittent resources to the grid”. However I could not help but notice that once again nobody mentioned international standards!