Denmark to combine wind power with vehicle-to-grid in new tests
MINI E - click above for high-res image gallery
Denmark is one of the countries on the leading edge of pushing vehicle electrification. They were one of the first countries to hook up with Better Place to roll out a charging infrastructure. Now, the Danes want to do a test that combines wind power and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. While wind power is a tremendous renewable resource, the wind often stops blowing. Thus some mechanism is needed to store energy when the wind blows and feeds it back it out when it stops.
That's where the V2G comes in. Electric vehicles could be used as a temporary buffer during calm air periods. Denmark plans a V2G test on the island of Bornholm, a place that already has enough wind turbine capacity to meet 40 percent of its electricity needs, but only gets 20 percent of its power from wind because of inconsistency. Denmark will use plug-in vehicles to evaluate whether capacity utilization of wind power can be improved by feeding power from the cars back into the grid. If the project is successful, more wind turbines will be added with the goal of getting half of Bornholm's power needs from the wind. Thanks to Mart for the tip!
Gallery: Quick Drive: MINI E
[Source: The Guardian]
Photos Copyright ©2008 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gorr 10:09AM (6/20/2009)
It cost more in transformers then the windmills themselfs. It's not stable so it cost even more in transformers and rectifiers and junctions box. You have to back-up these windmills with big polluting conventionnal enormous inneficient electrical generations machines because you have to sell electricity 24/24 7/7 365/365 so when the wind blow you have to stop the enormous conventionnal machines and restart them when the wind fall and you cannot instantly start and stop these enormous electrical generation machines so they are always running wind or not and the windmills add nothing. For charging batteries it's a bit different but the batteries need to be connected directly to the windmills and not to the grid and you still have the transformers/rectifiers steps to take account of.
I said to make a gazeous hydrogen electrical genaration plant with water re-circulation and stop bugging me with limp windmills.
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Innovator 11:40AM (6/20/2009)
The problem with V2G is the batteries in the vehicle. If they are rated for 5000 charge-discharge cycles and cost $20000, and now you use up those cycles for the benefit of the power company, who pays for the replacement battery?
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jeff 2:11PM (6/20/2009)
I think the idea is that a V2G role would not involve cycling the vehicles battery very deeply. Provided there were enough V2G capable vehicles in the fleet, I think it would only take a small contribution from each one to help balance out the load. Besides, that's the only way to do it without leaving EV owners stranded with depleted battery packs when the wind has died down for a while. And I don't think V2G would only be for the benefit of the power company, they would definitely need to find an attractive incentive for people to participate in a program like this. Even though the net flow of energy in and out of your car during V2G operation would be zero, they'd probably pay your for your services as an energy container. Load balancing is worth a lot to utilities.
Narsi Santhanam 4:59AM (6/21/2009)
The proponents of electric working with utilities are assuming too many things. First, smart grid is yet not there, and it is not entirely clear whether they will be able to provide the benefits they are claimed to provide (and by the way, the even the exact definition of "smart grid" is not fully clear - it seems to depend on the person you ask). Next, there are some who claim that using the smart grid concept, someone is going to recharge the batteries at specific time periods and still ensure that the car does not run out of power when the driver needs it most. Now, perhaps companies such as Google and BetterPlace have it figured out, but not too many people are going to leave their transportation fate to them - they do no wish to be stranded midway without charge - and if it is not even a hybrid, boy, how do they move from there?
The whole idea of electric cars is fascinating, but I think we are years away before people who are not the innovators will even start thinking of buying them as their main transportation vehicle. And just so you get the full story, there are over 750 million vehicles on the roads today world over, and it is expected that 3 million electric vehicles will be sold by 2012 (http://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=1310 ).
Again, countries such as Denmark are not really good yardsticks to go by when deciding for the rest of the world - these countries have so many things for them in alt energy that are not true for most other countries
Anyone investing in the electric cars market should understand that they are investing for the long term.
NS @ Alternative Profits - http://www.altprofits.com/ref/report/report.html
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DasBoese 7:21AM (6/21/2009)
"First, smart grid is yet not there, and it is not entirely clear whether they will be able to provide the benefits they are claimed to provide."
No shit, Sherlock, that's why the concept needs to be tested. Which is what they do with this project.
GoodCheer 1:15PM (6/21/2009)
"smart grid is yet not there,"
Well, electricity distribution IS there. And information distribution IS there. If you have electrical devices that can vary their loads (over existing wires) based on signals they recieve (over existing internet), then you're done. That's all you need.
And EVs can very easily have enough computational power in the VMS to do that. They need to be able to vary the flow into and out of the battery anyway, just to drive.
I don't know what anybody else might mean by the "Smart Grid" The grid itself is never going to be smart. It's just made of conductors. The Smart is in the appliances.
duinneeile 5:18AM (6/21/2009)
innovator is right the main problem is the no of cycles, if a person can drive for 3 or four days and only use one cycle of his battery, why would he use this system and charge-discharge once a day
maybe if the cost of altair nano drops it could work
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DasBoese 7:26AM (6/21/2009)
Researching this makes sense for countries like Denmark, where other highly efficient load balancing technologies like pump-storage hydro plants are hard to implement.
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