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Smart Grid TechnologyAutomaker to utilities: Get your EV act together! We're waiting on you!
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Aug 23, 2012
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By Jesse Berst
I've blogged in the past about the dead stupidity of our industry's approach to electric vehicles (EVs). Instead of joining forces to create a common system of smart charging, we waste time on hundreds of single-system pilots. Those pilots largely duplicate each other. Even worse, they typically don't tackle the tough problem -- namely how to control when vehicles charge to avoid peaks and to take advantage of low-cost energy while ensuring that the cars are fully topped off when needed.
General Motors is telling the world -- well, telling Green Car Reports at least -- about the shortcomings of the utility industry when it comes to EV charging. It is so fed up
that earlier this year it demonstrated its own charging software in partnership with Google and PJM. “We took a renewable energy signal that PJM has created,” explained Paul Pebbles, Business Service Manager for Fleet - Volt at OnStar, a GM subsidiary. “We were able to show, with a high level of confidence, that we could actually control the charging of the Volts to match that renewable energy signal.”
Pebbles was actually kinder to utilities than I would have been. He told the magazine that part of the delay comes because utility companies have to work with the public utility commission to gain approval for a pilot, then for a larger test, then wait for evaluation before they can roll it out.
True enough -- but that doesn't explain why so many of our pilots are aimed at the wrong target. It astonishes me (and irks me) that we have 50 different variations on EV charging hardware -- the easy part -- and painfully few examples of EV charging software -- the hard and important part.
Use the Talk Back form below if you can suggest why the U.S. utility industry is failing to step up to the smart charging challenge and how we might join forces to solve it together.
Related stories…
OnStar takes the collaborative route to EV integration
How the grid is blocking EV adoption (and what to do about it)
Forget vehicle-to-grid and think vehicle-to-home instead?
From the SGN Research Marketplace…
Smart Charging of Electric Vehicles - Opportunities and Challenges: This IDC Energy Insights report provides an in-depth look at the opportunities and challenges of smart charging systems for plug-in electric vehicles. Get details >>
Jesse Berst is the founder and chief analyst of Smart Grid News.com, the industry's oldest and largest smart grid site. A frequent keynoter at industry events in the U.S. and abroad, he also serves on advisory committees for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Institute for Electric Efficiency. He often provides strategic consulting to large corporations and venture-backed startups. He is a member of the advisory boards of GridGlo and Calico Energy Services.
| Charging stations for EV |
| Personally, I believe GM is trying to shuffle the fault for the fact that EVs are not selling nearly as rapidly as they thought would happen. They may well be concerned about public backlash for the taxpayer money spent bailing them out, especially when some of that money was devoted to EV production. EVs have two basic problems that I see: 1) Price--including the cost of battery replacement 2) Range Why the big emphasis on utility installing charging stations? The majority of potential EV buyers would be charging their vehicles at home and would have to in order to take advantage of the lowest utility rates because they occur between midnight and 5AM. Not many people will be pulling up to a utility EV charging station during those hours. Utility charging stations will only be used primarily by those who live beyond the round trip driving range of their vehicles or people who use the vehicles a lot during the day or who are on trips. |
| Mark Byron Wooldridge - 08/23/2012 - 06:39 |
| Aren't You Getting Ahead of Yourself? |
| The biggest problem with EV is the distribution transformer and distribution infrastructure capacity. My understanding of these new EV charging systems is that they require 18 kW of power. This is not considering the kVA requirements or the impact of harmonics from these electronic (I assume they are switch mode) power supplies. For example, today you have a 50 kVA padmount transformer feeding three homes. If each of these customers were to install an EV charging station, this transformer would need to be resized. Potentially, it would need to double in size. Without an understanding of the load diversity of these EV charging stations, you have no way of knowing the impact and how to properly size this new tranformer. By the way, most likely these EV stations would be added over a couple of years so you would end-up resizing the transformer two different times. Next, how is this going to impact the underground or overhead distribution system? There will be a large impact to the underground distribution system. This article does not address these concerns Instead it is worried about matching renewable energy to EV charging demands. This is a classic example of putting the cart ahead of the horse. Utilities better engage quickly or they are going to have a mess on their hands. |
| Todd Sumner - 08/23/2012 - 07:13 |
| Actually, Todd... |
| Actually, Todd, smart charging does indeed deal with all the issues you highlight. The system looks at the demand coming from the chargers (including those in homes), looks at supply coming in (including renewables), adds in forecasts, adds in the consumer's preferences, looks at how much each battery needs to reach full charge, then optimizes the entire system, telling each charger when and how fast to charge. This kind of optimization can avoid or at least delay the problems you (correctly) identified. |
| Jesse Berst - 08/23/2012 - 07:26 |
| Matching Loads to Renewable Production |
| I have a concern about matching loads to renewable production that I'd like others more knowledgable than I to tell me where I am wrong. 1. As I understand it, renewable generation takes precedence over dispatchable generation. To meet RPS requirements, or reduce fuel costs, or avoid 'take or pay' penalties, renewable generation is virtually always taken by system operators. 2. If this is true, increasing load during times when renewable generation is high does nothing to increase the utilization of renewable generation. The wind does not blow any harder, nor do the clouds part. 3. What happens when loads increase? Utilities turn up that nat gas-fired generators! Or elect not to cool down a coal plant that they might not otherwise have needed. 4. Providing renewable signals also has other consequences -- like alerting IPPs to market supply conditions that could be used for nefarious purposes (a la Enron). I am not a global warming skeptic and hope for increased proliferation of renewable gen, but fail to see how renewable signals help. Can anyone point out the flaws in my argument? Paul Alvarez Wired Group 720-308-2407 |
| Paul Alvarez - 08/23/2012 - 10:50 |
| Still Unsure |
| Jesse, I am sure that you are correct when it comes to the capabilities of these EV charging systems. Unfortunately, there are other technical issues that need to be discussed before utilities decide to spend money developing a communcations infrastructure that might or might not be used by the ratepayer. First question that has to be answered is the following: will BEV's be embraced by consumers? Below is a weblink to a nice article by Fred Schlachter concerning all electric vehicles. Here's a quote from him, "Despite their many potential advantages, all-electric vehicles will not replace the standard American family car in the foreseeable future." http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201207/electriccars.cfm Therefore, how can a utility make an investment decision when there is uncertainty about the future of BEV's? Second, the power requirements of the EV charging station is more important than its capabilities. Utilities will need to limit the power requirements to ensure that these charging station do not create a transformer overload condition. Right now, I have read that manufacturers are pushing for the adoption of larger stations and higher ampacity electrical charging plugs. I assume that it is intended to handle multiple vehicles and more rapid charging. Third, I can see harmonics becoming an issue unless this is addressed in advance. Is there a standard that address harmonics? If not, a standard needs to be written to protect the power quality of other ratepayers. Fourth, what to do about lower load factors? If you are able to manage the loads better which would lead to higher load factors, then great. Personally, I am concern that the opposite will happen. Poor load factors will create additional capacity requirements without offsetting these costs through increasing kWh sales. Right now, more work needs to be done to address these potential concerns. |
| Todd Sumner - 08/23/2012 - 12:45 |
| Electric vehicles and smart grid |
| GM should not be throwing any stones. allegedly they were holding on to Volts for the first year with up to an additional $10.000. dealer mark up, in some cases they would not take them off of the show room floor to allow test drives, GM said that they could not keep up with demand and were going to add a second shift, then canceled the 2nd shift saying again their not selling. Volt outsold Nissan one month and the dealer markups were in question for that month. Who got the $7,500. tax credit? that benchmark happened in the new year. A Volt has 35 mile range in ev mode the Leaf 100+ miles and the Tesla 200+ miles. One could use more energy cooking a turkey or washing and drying a comforter. The Leaf and other vehicles have timers that can be set to charge only during OFF Peak hours. I sell EVSE equipment for a dozen manufactures and have been working on this for some time. With more than 2300 utilities in the nation it is a lot of work. If 70% of passenger vehicles in this county charged 11p to 6A we would not need to add one power station in this country. I live in WA. state and 91% of our power is hydro. I drive for less that 2 cents a mile. Green power, local jobs... Just saying. |
| Rhonda Walton - 08/23/2012 - 19:39 |
| Utility Coordination |
| As someone who deals with many different utilities across North America (Energy Management ftw!), I can say that when one refers to "the utilities", they refer to a rather (read: very) heterogenous group. Each utility has its own bill formats, its own metrics and methods of calculating usage and cost, and regulations (or lack thereof) vary from state to state, province to province. Even the same utility will change things around from billing period to billing period. So getting all of them, or even a few of them to cooperate and coordinate towards a single end is quite a daunting task. Who will take the lead? Assume responsibility? Which standards/regulations will be used? How will they be enforced? Add to that the fact that some utilities yet have to computerize their systems, and that those that have use different platforms, and one finds the problem compounded. It's frustrating, believe me, I know, however the problem is much more complex than one might initially assume. |
| Philippe Lyon - 08/26/2012 - 23:26 |
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