The risks and opportunities of the mass rollout of Electric Vehicle Chargers to the Grid

By 2050, there are estimated to be 37.4 million Battery Electric Vehicles on the UK’s roads – some 36 million more than today. Last year, the former Government unveiled plans requiring 100% of new vehicles to be zero emission by 2035, and the new Labour Government has promised to return this target to its previous date of 2030. All this amounts to a rapid revolution – not just for Britain’s vehicles, but the utilities that power them.

The rollout of public charge points is increasingly seen as one of the greater threats to achieving our EV ambitions. Despite an increase of 46% in the past year, public charge point rollout will need to continue increasing exponentially to meet the Government’s ambitions, against issues ranging from poor digital connectivity to broken chargers.

This growth, and its resulting energy demand, presents an array of risks to the National Grid as it stands.

At a local level, a surge in demand from EV chargers could overload transformers that are unequipped to deal with rapid and uneven increases in local load. EV chargers need higher power than residential loads, making distribution networks more vulnerable to voltage drops and instability. They can also introduce harmful harmonics to the local grid, affecting power quality and damaging low voltage networks.

At a transmission level, unpredictable demand patterns from EV chargers could complicate load forecasting and management, creating new peak load conditions and necessitating higher reserve margins. The National Grid could face a double hit of congestion in transmission networks and frequency instability.

All of this points to the need for grid modernisation on a rapid scale and timeline – and there’s huge opportunity in that.

Managed right, EV charger rollout can turbocharge investment in smart grid technologies, including advanced metering infrastructure and distribution automation. Revenue streams from charging services can be harnessed to upgrade infrastructure, whilst the work needed for installation and maintenance will create thousands of jobs.

Critically, with new Vehicle-to-Grid tech, EVs can even be integrated into the grid as providers, releasing energy back to the grid in times of need or providing services such as frequency regulation or peak shaving. Earlier this year, during a major storm that caused power outages in Victoria, Australia, a fleet of 16 EVs successfully discharged power back into the grid, providing 107KW of support.

Now imagine what a fleet of 37.4 million could do.

EVs, acting as millions of decentralised battery storage units, could transform the UK’s grid resilience and smooth any intermittency from renewable energy sources, storing energy during periods of low demand and discharging during peak periods. ?

Industry has a huge role to play in ensuring it is these opportunities, and not risks, that prevail in both the conversation and outcome of the EV charger rollout to the grid. At Camlin for example, our grid optimisation and management technologies can help ensure the grid is able to handle intermittent and multi-directional power flows, as well as provide crucial insights on where infrastructure needs upgrading, enabled by our Sapient data management platform. Our highly accurate ability to target interventions and investment, all while minimising unplanned interruptions is underpinned by our industry-leading solutions and services for Fault & Load Management and Asset Monitoring.

Camlin’s technology is buying time and giving capacity to DNO’s to make upgrades and add new capacity needed by optimising usage of the current networks, unlocking greater network flexibility to reduce costs for customers and further optimise the network.??

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Our UK Energy business, Kelvatek and Northern Powergrid’s GridLINK project is establishing multiple automatic switching points along low-voltage power cables linking customers to their nearest substation. Using a new digital system, it allows the redirection of power demand from one cable to another during peak usage times. This helps balance the power usage by automatically shifting power demand from one cable to another when needed. This prevents overloads and ensures improvement of the overall reliability and stability of power supply for consumers.?

GridLINK aims to support Northern Powergrid by allowing the faster adoption of low carbon technology on their network which will allow more consumers to participate in the energy flexibility marketplace.??

The grid of the future needs an industry willing to invest within a clear but comprehensive regulatory framework, deploying new technologies to create a low carbon and secure system. Industry must collaborate to create greater visibility of events and customer behaviour across the network, recognising its duty as the intermediary between the grid and the customer. ??

With a new Government that has staked so much on Energy, and separate plans for the largest upgrade of the grid in decades, there is reason to be optimistic. By taking a proactive approach, industry can help mitigate the risks and embrace the opportunities of the coming rollout, to help build a grid fit for the future.

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Thanks,

Peter