Smart Charging as a Smart Solution

[Vendor Content]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a sponsored post from Jedlix. A Dutch version of this article is below the English version. In a few years, the rest of the world will follow the standard set by Tesla drivers: they will make the switch to an electric vehicle. No more emissions, everyone will simply charge their vehicle...
[WPURI="https://teslamotorsclub.com/blog/2018/11/06/smart-charging-as-a-smart-solution/"]READ FULL ARTICLE[/WPURI]

 

[ramonneke]

What is it these days that there is no way to manage your account via a website? It is so freaking annoying to have to create an account via an app, generate a app specific password that I also want to store in a password manager.

Besides that, the user registration fails on the email verification where clicking on the validation link results in the response "
Cannot GET /email-verified".

Somehow the email got verified but I had to go all the way back and login regularly but because I didn't have the password stored in the password manager I had to reset my password. This procedure luckily IS possible via a website so I could use my password manager too to generate a new random password....

 

[ramonneke]

Now I have configured my car in the app and it really isn't obvious at all what my gain could be.

For example, I would always be charging at home (ABC) to for example 50%, above that I only want to charge if I actually have a decent discount or rate. I usually have enough energy to travel to most places.

 

[SageBrush]

I sure like the idea of soaking up excess clean energy that would otherwise be wasted/curtailed but I'm really skeptical that this app/company has a clue how to make that happen.

I'd love to be convinced otherwise.

 

[Riggald]

I sure like the idea of soaking up excess clean energy that would otherwise be wasted/curtailed but I'm really skeptical that this app/company has a clue how to make that happen.

I'd love to be convinced otherwise.

There are lots of pilot schemes live, right now, in Europe, and often they feed their results directly into Government policy. The know-how gets spread widely and fast.

The Netherlands (where they are based) is probably the second-most BEV intensive vehicle market in the world after Norway. It is less than 5% the size of the USA, but has sold about 10 to 20 times as many I-Paces, for example.

I'm guessing if anyone has an informed view of how it can be done, it's a charging services company in the Netherlands.

The key next steps are adding V2G capability to CCS and Tesla vehicles. (The chargeport of world's best-selling BEV - ChadeMo - already has V2G).

 

[SageBrush]

@Riggald
^^ I should have clarified that I was thinking of the USA.

 

[SG57]

Glad to see others tackle the problem of departure-time smart charging. Looks similar in functionality to the Smart Charging that's been a feature in the app, Dashboard for Tesla.

My suggestion would be to keep going - add an option to start HVAC near departure time, an option for changing the charge limit, and an option to maintain multiple smart charging schedules (think 1 for the week days and 1 for the weekends).

 

[Schumpeter]

I use the service in the Netherlands and I have to say it works pretty neat. There is also a Dutch thread on this forum where we deal with feedback and suggestions.

On average I receive about 15 Euro's per month from providing the flexibility to Jedlix. It would be great if they would further pump up these numbers when more solar and wind flood the grid!

 

[BestHand]

I did not get it. My car as most other cars still need to be charged at night time anyway. Not in a morning, not in day time, not in an evening. So, most cars have to be charged at night time, and night time is not that long, say form midnight to 6 o'clock.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I did not get it. My car as most other cars still need to be charged at night time anyway. Not in a morning, not in day time, not in an evening. So, most cars have to be charged at night time, and night time is not that long, say form midnight to 6 o'clock.

6 hours of charging at 32A, even being extremely conservative with charging efficiency, is 36.9kWh of charge into the battery.

That's a lot of driving, far more than most people need. That implies that there's plenty of spare time in which to charge the car. So the cars can be used as a production-response or demand-response system, that can match charging with electricity production or other demand.

If BEVs are very successfully, we'll need smart charging to avoid excessive simultaneous charging.

 

[ebullio]

6 hours of charging at 32A, even being extremely conservative with charging efficiency, is 36.9kWh of charge into the battery.

That's a lot of driving, far more than most people need. That implies that there's plenty of spare time in which to charge the car. So the cars can be used as a production-response or demand-response system, that can match charging with electricity production or other demand.

If BEVs are very successfully, we'll need smart charging to avoid excessive simultaneous charging.

In Europe most people have 3 phase charging possibilities, so 6 hours at 3x32A will fill up any Tesla over here.

 

[Riggald]

I did not get it. My car as most other cars still need to be charged at night time anyway. Not in a morning, not in day time, not in an evening. So, most cars have to be charged at night time, and night time is not that long, say form midnight to 6 o'clock.

Some cars arrive home at 5, some at 7, some at midnight.
Some cars need to leave at 6am, some at 8am.
Some cars need to replenish 200 miles of range, some need 100 miles, some need 30.
Many will vary from day to day, some will vary occasionally.
All in all, it's best left to groups of cars to arrange between themselves.

 

[Missile Toad]

I got to agree with @SageBrush . The Western Grid, which covers Colorado, California and Arizona, among others, only gets 5% of its power from wind (and less from solar). I'm guessing, the best one could hope for, is to charge their car at 6ish percent wind when they charge overnight -- by timing it just right. I'm doubting the differences between the peak winds and the low winds, at around 1% of the generator mix, can generate a lot of 'payments' to share with those who charge overnight.

On the other hand, Texas has 10% wind generation in the mix of generators (using July 2018 data), and presumably, during the 'low demand' times around midnight to 3AM, that wind generation would creep up to 20% of the production mix. I know wind generation is where all the newly constructed generation is coming from in the next 2-3 years ... so maybe there is some hope for this in Texas.

For grins, I took a look at the New England grid operator snapshot of renewable use at 12:30AM (presumably a peak time in wind as a % of generation). At that moment it was around 10% (other renewables making about another 8%)... so maybe a well timed charge could find the peaks and avoid the troughs in wind there, and make a difference.

 

[robertvg]

The Western Grid, which covers Colorado, California and Arizona, among others, only gets 5% of its power from wind (and less from solar)

In The Netherlands in 2030 around 70% of our electricity will come from renewable energy - mainly scheduled and already being build offshore wind, the rest onshore wind, solar and biomass. You will understand the interest of Dutch grid operators into this kind of experiments in demand response systems
If we do this right than electric vehicles and variable - renewable energy can reinforce each other.

 

[SageBrush]

If we do this right than electric vehicles and variable - renewable energy can reinforce each other.

For sure.
Even today in California and Colorado it is frequent that clean energy sources are curtailed*. The problem is that a system that directs excess energy to on-call sinks does not exist today, and it is a lot more complicated than today's "smart" meters which really are only able to count in time slices. We need power electronics that can respond to utility signals saying when clean energy is being wasted. Also keep in mind that a majority of consumers really only care when energy is cheap, which may be clean energy -- or not.

*Curtailment itself occurs in the US because energy source mix is prioritized by cost without any pollution consideration.

 

[ramonneke]

If you drive electric you should Always Be Charing (ABC) meaning your car is likely to be connected 20+ hours a day. If your car charges up in 5 hours time that means that there is a whole lot of room to apply smart charging.

 

[robertvg]

For sure.
Even today in California and Colorado it is frequent that clean energy sources are curtailed*. The problem is that a system that directs excess energy to on-call sinks does not exist today, and it is a lot more complicated than today's "smart" meters.
Curtailment itself is complicated in the US because energy source mix is prioritized by cost without any pollution consideration.

Wrt electric vehicles I still expect a lot of the new ISO15118 protocol that allows the car to communicate directly to the EVSE (the charge equipment) about charging schedules, payments etc.
For proper smart charging the backoffice needs to know 1) total battery size 2) current SoC and 3) time of departure (ToD)
Jedlix (and also others that offer this service) are currently using a big detour: to talk to the car they are dependent on the manufacturers API, but to get the user preferences (minimum required SoC, ToD) they have to use a smartphone app.
Once the car and charger can exchange and negotiate this info and charge schedules directly adoption will grow imo.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

For sure.
Even today in California and Colorado it is frequent that clean energy sources are curtailed*. The problem is that a system that directs excess energy to on-call sinks does not exist today, and it is a lot more complicated than today's "smart" meters which really are only able to count in time slices. We need power electronics that can respond to utility signals saying when clean energy is being wasted. Also keep in mind that a majority of consumers really only care when energy is cheap, which may be clean energy -- or not.

*Curtailment itself occurs in the US because energy source mix is prioritized by cost without any pollution consideration.

EV charging:
- lots of spare time
- high level of predictability
- increasing proportion of electricity demand
- car has Internet connectivity

Renewables:
- variable but
- predictable over a 24 hour period

Conventional generation:
- dispatchable

You don't need smart power electronics to make a big difference. You just need to communicate an initial plan, and then make adjustments from there. A connected car should be able to receive communications and respond in under a second. It's a software problem.

 

[BestHand]

6 hours of charging at 32A, even being extremely conservative with charging efficiency, is 36.9kWh of charge into the battery.

That's a lot of driving, far more than most people need. That implies that there's plenty of spare time in which to charge the car. So the cars can be used as a production-response or demand-response system, that can match charging with electricity production or other demand.

If BEVs are very successfully, we'll need smart charging to avoid excessive simultaneous charging.

I did not say all people would charge all 6 hours. What I meant is that those who have cheaper rate t night time will charge within that period which is usually between midnight and 6-8AM. So these people even with 1-2 hours charge will create big load in relatively short period of time, which is what we do not want (the goal is spread the load over 24 hours I guess).

 

[Jedlix]

Thank you all for the comments. Happy to respond to some of your questions and suggestions as an employee of Jedlix and big fan of this forum:

-We are planning to serve more European countries very soon. We do this for other car brands as well. The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance is actually an investor in our company. Please shoot a mail at [email protected] if you are interested.
-Within our solution mobility comes always first. If you have to charge all need or first want the car to be charged to a minimum level we will always do this. In practice we notice that most customers charge at 11 kW and on average we notice something like 20 - 25 kWh per charging session which is about 2 hours of charging.
-When an area has only a few % wind/solar energy it is hard to talk about of surplus renewable energy which we put in the car. However we can still help the TSO/ISO to balance the grid and provide a financial reward towards the driver. Helping the integrating of renewable energy and the value which comes along with this is obviously higher when renewable energy gets to higher levels.
-We also serve connected charging stations. We apply this mostly in the public domain for now, but these could also occur at someone's home. Helping surplus solar energy (like in California) during the day is probably best done at charging stations at work or other public sites you charge during the day.

Thanks and let me know if you have any more detailed questions!