A number of years ago, one of the smartest entrepreneurs in the electric industry (as evidenced by the timing of his sale of generating assets to a big energy producer) bought a hybrid car. He said it was a mobile electric battery and that he’d sell electricity back to the grid from it, sooner or later. That was a while ago. Now every major automotive manufacturer around the world is making a big commitment to electric vehicles (EVs). And yes they are basically mobile batteries.
Renault, which has cross ownership arrangements with Nissan and Mitsubishi, just announced the creation of Renault Energy Services. This new corporate unit is dedicated to a broad array of challenges: the smart grid, charging systems and electric storage.
Because these are automotive companies, the electric vehicle as the center of the operation. But if we learned that an electric utility was exploring these three areas in some integrated way we would certainly not be surprised either.
Nissan officials in the United Kingdom (where incidentally there is little reserve electric generation capacity in the conventional network) claim to have an “intelligent charging strategy”. This facilitates recharging car batteries at off peak periods. The added benefit here is the potential for better utilization of renewable energy sources like wind power, which are often under-utilized during off peak periods.
If large numbers of vehicles eventually do recharge batteries during off peak hours, it implies several changes for the utility industry. First, all those extra vehicles drawing power off peak would boost asset utilization rates substantially–a pretty big positive. However, the same so called intelligent software that directs the battery to recharge during off peak hours, can also be programmed to resell power back to the utility when power prices are high, assuming the vehicle won’t be used.
In a sense, all of our driveways and streets could be lined with thousands of what amounts to very small power plants. All with the potential eventually to sell electricity back into the grid. Planning for future electric power generation needs just got a lot more complicated.
Recent Comments