Page 49 - European Energy Innovation - Autumn 2016 publication
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Autumn 2016 European Energy Innovation 49
E-MOBILITY
be delayed during the night without potential in supporting an economic The Nikola project was born. The
consequence to the driving needs of and stable power system based on project partners created a so-called
the user). renewable energy. service catalog. E.g. a list of all the kind
of services that the electric vehicle
The vehicle may even be able to deliver BRIEF HISTORY OF V2G could provide to the power system
power from the main propulsion The leading expert on V2G, and the first both on a local (distribution gird) and
battery back into the electric grid upon to thoroughly explore its application, system-wide (transmission net and
demand. This ability is called “vehicle is Professor Willett Kempton of the market) level. The approach was then
to grid” or simply V2G. University Of Delaware. to go through all of these services to
understand the technical and economic
These capabilities combined means Back in 1996 Professor Kempton saw potential of each.
that electric vehicle has a strong the potential in using the electric
vehicle battery, an expensive asset These services included adaptive
which remains unused for 23 hours charging, where charging is simply
a day (while a vehicle is parked), to delayed to reflect the price of energy
support the power system. or the renewable content in the grid at
a certain point in time.
The concept was first described in the
1997 publication “Electric vehicles as a It also included services that hinder
new power source for electric utilities”. the adverse effects that a fast-charging
vehicle may have on a local distribution
Over the coming years Professor network – creating bottlenecks and
Kempton not only demonstrated that overloading. All of these services were
vehicles, with relatively slight soft- and tested either in the university labs or
hardware additions could be made to as part of a field test in a small Danish
support bidirectional powerflow (V2G) town.
– but also that there is an economic
incentive in participating in power One of the largest accomplishments
market products where the EV owner of the project however, was when a
is compensated for letting her vehicle large vehicle company, Nissan Motors,
support the power system. decided to join the project.
THE NIKOLA PROJECT – A DANISH This allowed the Nikola partners to
APPLICATION OF V2G carry out the services using state-of-
Seventeen years after the idea was the-art series produced vehicles which
first formulated, a Danish project even supported the V2G capability.
was initiated to perform a thorough
investigation of how electric vehicles The advanced visionary V2G concepts
can support the power system in a conceived in 1996 could now be tested
Danish context. on present-day electric vehicles already
driving in the thousands on Danish
A group of researches from the roads.
Technical University Of Denmark had
already worked for some years on EV Together with Project partners, NUVVE,
research and had started cooperating Nissan and ENEL, it became possible
with Professor Kempton and his team. to demonstrate that two Nissan Leafs
reliably could deliver frequency
By 2013 it was time to investigate how containment services adhering to
the knowledge and technology of Danish ancillary service terms.
professor Kempton could be applied
to, and benefit a European power system. In the experiment the Leafs where
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