China Now Doing “Extensive” Vehicle-to-Grid Trials
Vehicle-to-grid discussions have been around for as long as I’ve been reading about electric vehicles. The concept is simple: electric vehicles have big batteries, cars are parked most of the day (about 95% of the time), and those batteries could be used to help the grid deal with fluctuations in electricity supply and demand throughout the day and night. We’ve seen trials around the world in the past decade, but there’s nothing happening on a huge scale yet. That said …
If we’re discussing where the first very large-scale program would be implemented, I’m quite sure we’d quickly put China at the top of the list. China is doing everything bigger on cleantech — the biggest solar farms, the biggest solar companies, the most wind turbine production, the most EV production and sales. Particularly talking about electric vehicles, China’s EV market is approximately the same size as the EV market in rest of the world combined! The country can also make big top-down changes faster than any other major economy. So, let’s get to the news.
“China launched its first large-scale vehicle-to-grid (V2G) interaction across an entire province, involving over 1,000 electric vehicles (EVs) in the eastern province of Jiangsu for off-peak charging and reverse discharging, showcasing EVs’ potential as mobile power banks,” the Xinhua news service writes.
Now, this is still not the mass-scale program I was discussing above. This is another moderately sized trial program. You can call it “large-scale” I guess — it’s 1,000+ EVs, not 100. But it’s not 1 million.
Let me also note that no one is being forced into this pilot program. EV owners were enticed by charging discounts from the State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Co., Ltd. That pulled in 1,277 electric vehicles across 482 charging stations.
“Such a V2G approach can release a load of 12,000 kilowatts during electricity consumption peak a day, effectively cutting peak electricity consumption by 17,000 kilowatt-hours, enough to power 2,100 households for a day, according to the company.”
Notably, it’s that peak electricity demand that is most expensive for the grid. It’s when you need to have extra power plants on standby most of the time for brief startup and electricity production at peak times that you get really expensive electricity. Because 1) no one else can give you that electricity and you need it, the supplier can charge a house and a boat; and 2) if your power plant isn’t producing and selling electricity most of the time, it needs to charge a house and a boat when it does! The best way to cut electricity costs: eliminate the need for big peak power providers that charge a house and a boat in order to give you electricity at 6pm. Flexible V2G programs like this can do just that.
Some people are critical or skeptical of V2G because who wants to risk wearing out their EV batteries prematurely? However, we’re seeing that EV batteries last a long time, and there’s also a point where many of us will take the extra cash today for unnoticeable use of our EV batteries while their parked and are willing to see how much capacity our batteries still have 3, 5, or 10 years down the road. Personally, I’m really not that concerned about battery degradation, and I think there’s still a lot of overhype about how much range an electric car needs. I have had the lowest-range Tesla for 5 years and still don’t see any point in spending thousands of dollars more on a longer-range vehicle. (And I got the white vegan leather seats for an extra $1,000 and would definitely do so again! They keep the car much cooler, are super soft, and look great. A bigger battery would do … almost nothing for me.) So, yeah, if someone offered me money to use some of my car’s battery once in a while, I’d take it.
State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power seems happy with the trial. I look forward to seeing them reach 1 million participants.
Incidentally, right after I wrote that, I read this: “Ruan added that by 2030, the number of EVs in Jiangsu is expected to exceed 10 million. ‘If just 10 percent of these vehicles participate in reverse discharging, they could provide over 1 million kilowatts of peak-shaving capacity, equivalent to plugging in an 1 million-kilowatt ‘portable power bank’ to the grid.'” 10% of 10 million is 1 million, of course. I’m happy to see Ruan and the State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power are thinking in the same way as me!
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