Results tagged “Gridpoint” from Electric Vehicle Authority
Carl Lewis was previously the CSO of Gridpoint which is a smart grid company that allocates energy throughout a geographic community. The car is a key component in the transition to a smart grid. Consumers will be buying and pluging into the grid. It is our goal to provide consumers with information on where they are spending and producing power and then give the utility a way to aggregate information and measure who consumed what, where, when and determine billing.
assuming 25% of cars on the grid were plugin by 2020 then we would need an additional 160 large power plants in the US to manage on-peak charging vs. 0-8 if off-peak charging were used. We have enough capacity to power 100 million electric vehicles today if we manage charging correctly. We have more than enough capacity, we need to make the cars themselves "grid aware" to manage that capacity successfully. Average EV power consumption is ~10kWh.
Speed chargers (going from 6-8hr charge to 1-2hr charge) triples the charging footprint on the grid. Most utilities are not prepared for the additional peak load. Time used pricing model helps to balance this out and is being rolled out across the nation. There will be a contract between the utility and the consumer, a network software program that helps to optimize "who's doing what when".
It's hard to clean up the production of gasoline, we can make it more efficient in use but harder to clean the development and usage of it. By contrast, the grid is constantly getting cleaner based on generation sources (wind, solar, clean coal). This is a paradigm switch.
Smart charging allows utilities to manage the one way flow of electricity to PHEV's within parameters set by plug-in owners. Able to adapt charging to grid requirements, slowing during high demand and increasing with the availability of renewable energy. Since it will be cheaper to charge a car more slowly during off peak hours the market will respond based on price as long as they have the right information and systems to motivate and support them.
Electricity is a locational challenge, different locations have different needs. You need to understand where the asset is sitting within the geography of the grid. It's a provision problem. The smart grid makes EV's aware. We have to take the aggregate data of thousands, millions of vehicles and tie it to the grid. The United States has the largest wind generation capacity in the world (just surpassing Germany). Combining weather forecasting with energy use we can utilize this free* energy resource with technology to optimize what is going on real time. If for example, hundreds of cars could be charged to 98% instead of 100% (based on driver needs) most people wouldn't know or care and this could be done to reduce stress on the grid in anticipation of peak hours and electricity generation forcasting. Everyone wins and the tragedy of the commons (in terms of overcharging unnecessarily) could be avoided.
Other EV applications on the grid: smart charging, roam charging (one bill no matter where charging occurs), locational awareness of load control opportunities. Charging stations (public area charging of apartments and town home dwellers) are all things we are taking into consideration and trying to build into our solutions.
The US has 50 distinct regulation areas, each state defines it's own tariffs etc. Additionally there is a US regulation. The US auto manufacturer has to deal with each of these regulations and standards groups are working to create more efficiency - there is a new plug standard under work. Close to 3,000 utilities across the US (each is independently owned an operated) makes standardization and efficiency even more challenging. There is a huge information flow challenge here. It's a complicated problem that Gridpoint is working to address.
assuming 25% of cars on the grid were plugin by 2020 then we would need an additional 160 large power plants in the US to manage on-peak charging vs. 0-8 if off-peak charging were used. We have enough capacity to power 100 million electric vehicles today if we manage charging correctly. We have more than enough capacity, we need to make the cars themselves "grid aware" to manage that capacity successfully. Average EV power consumption is ~10kWh.
Speed chargers (going from 6-8hr charge to 1-2hr charge) triples the charging footprint on the grid. Most utilities are not prepared for the additional peak load. Time used pricing model helps to balance this out and is being rolled out across the nation. There will be a contract between the utility and the consumer, a network software program that helps to optimize "who's doing what when".
It's hard to clean up the production of gasoline, we can make it more efficient in use but harder to clean the development and usage of it. By contrast, the grid is constantly getting cleaner based on generation sources (wind, solar, clean coal). This is a paradigm switch.
Smart charging allows utilities to manage the one way flow of electricity to PHEV's within parameters set by plug-in owners. Able to adapt charging to grid requirements, slowing during high demand and increasing with the availability of renewable energy. Since it will be cheaper to charge a car more slowly during off peak hours the market will respond based on price as long as they have the right information and systems to motivate and support them.
Electricity is a locational challenge, different locations have different needs. You need to understand where the asset is sitting within the geography of the grid. It's a provision problem. The smart grid makes EV's aware. We have to take the aggregate data of thousands, millions of vehicles and tie it to the grid. The United States has the largest wind generation capacity in the world (just surpassing Germany). Combining weather forecasting with energy use we can utilize this free* energy resource with technology to optimize what is going on real time. If for example, hundreds of cars could be charged to 98% instead of 100% (based on driver needs) most people wouldn't know or care and this could be done to reduce stress on the grid in anticipation of peak hours and electricity generation forcasting. Everyone wins and the tragedy of the commons (in terms of overcharging unnecessarily) could be avoided.
Other EV applications on the grid: smart charging, roam charging (one bill no matter where charging occurs), locational awareness of load control opportunities. Charging stations (public area charging of apartments and town home dwellers) are all things we are taking into consideration and trying to build into our solutions.
The US has 50 distinct regulation areas, each state defines it's own tariffs etc. Additionally there is a US regulation. The US auto manufacturer has to deal with each of these regulations and standards groups are working to create more efficiency - there is a new plug standard under work. Close to 3,000 utilities across the US (each is independently owned an operated) makes standardization and efficiency even more challenging. There is a huge information flow challenge here. It's a complicated problem that Gridpoint is working to address.
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