Cash for charging your electric car

EV owners could earn £50 a year for hooking their car up to the balancing system, according to a new research by the National Grid. Released today, the report, called […]

EV owners could earn £50 a year for hooking their car up to the balancing system, according to a new research by the National Grid.

Released today, the report, called Bucks for balancing: can plug-in vehicles of the future extract cash – and carbon – from the power grid? looks at how electric cars could be used to balance electricity demand.

With a future energy mix that is likely to rely on sources that are more intermittent, the system could be very valuable.

Stewart Larque, spokesperson for National Grid told ELN: “It does show the opportunity for new balancing services, which we need because of future challenges. With greater use of offshore wind and also nuclear, which is more inflexible, the EV system could fit in alongside electricity storage and interconnecting to provide a stable source of power.”

Another suggestion of the report was a two-way flow, where energy could be taken from a plugged-in vehicle and used in the grid when it needed more energy.

This Vehicle-To-Grid system could potentially be very beneficial to businesses which own a large fleet of vehicles, with revenue of £600 to £8000 per year according to the amount of balancing they could provide.

Mr Larque added that this was less likely because implementing the technology was more “impractical”.

A team of engineers from the network operator worked with transport technology experts Ricardo to model the system.

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