REVS: three things I learned about V2G along the way

Many of you know that over the past few years I have been working on the REVS vehicle-to-grid demonstration project in the ACT. It has been such an amazing journey with an awesome team. Seriously Kat Lucas-Healey , Bjorn Sturmberg , Lahiru Hapuarachchi , Ben W. , Lincoln DeKalb , Michael, Eddie Thanavelil , Tim Washington , Justus van Biljon , Mejbaul Haque (PhD, RPEQ, Senior Member IEEE) , Johannes Hendriks , and everyone else involved, you all rock!

Today our last knowledge sharing reports were published. What a journey it’s been! I thought I’ll just summarise with my top three takeaways:

V2G is coming, but not quite there yet

There is a lot of interest in V2G. Virtually everyone we spoke to knew of it and saw its potential (see our social science and business models reports). People told us about all sorts of use cases. From the (dare I say) mundane, like demand response services. Through to more exotic like using vehicles as a backup distribution network. But that was leavened with a lot of concerns too. Would it impact how vehicles can be driven? Will vehicles be there when I need grid services? How much capacity will drivers let me use? What will the environmental impact of my EV be?

Our research can help some of these. For example, vehicles seem to be available for grid services most of the time. Although it might require a behaviour change for drivers to plug in more than they would without V2G. Drivers can see benefit in V2G and are open to offering their vehicle’s capacity, but what they are after might be a bit different to how the energy system speaks of the benefits. And even if drivers are really conservative in how they want to operate their vehicle’s battery, there can still be significant capacity available to respond to energy system needs (see our modelling report for more details).

What good looks like for V2G depends who you are

People had different views on what outcome they desired from V2G. For example, lots of people felt reducing emissions was important. Others felt that reducing cost was important. Thing is, minimising emissions is costly, but minimising cost is emissions intensive. And given that the industry usually likes to communicate to energy users its needs through price signals, reducing emissions is also often in tension with meeting grid services needs. The picture below shows his nicely (in my opinion). On average the charge behaviour is pretty much opposite between reducing emissions and cost.

This isn’t the only tension. In the report we also talk about other tension such as the impact of drivers reserving battery capacity for driving needs, and what sorts of tariffs seem to elicit better response from V2G chargers (see our modelling report for more details).

Whatever we do, we must keep it people-focussed

What does this all mean? Well to me it means that whatever we do, we need to be people-focussed. Clearly there are lots of people with a stake in V2G’s operation. Not just drivers but energy system stakeholders too. V2G this is especially the case because it connects the energy and transport worlds together in ways they haven’t been before.

The impacts of not working together can be spectacular. Look at this load forecast!

This doesn’t necessarily indicate what will happen, more what could happen if we don’t co-ordinate. Lots of flexiblity can be great if it all responds in the right way, but can also make things dramatically worse if it doesn’t. In particularly if it all responds at once. How can we resolve this? By working together of course! Then we can ensure that how this flexibility works is well co-ordinated and meets everyone’s needs. See our modelling report for more details.

You can read about all this and more in our knowledge sharing reports. In particular our modelling and business models reports that were published today!