Event start date: 06/05/2020 01:00 PM CST
Pecan Street’s Engineering Team hosted a talk about the latest on Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology on June 5, 2020. The discussion included highlights from our recent V2G demonstration project, Tesla’s recent V2G announcement, and an overview of Pecan Street’s ongoing research EV research.
More About V2G Technology
You may have heard about V2G in the news recently with the announcement of Tesla’s new bidirectional charging capabilities. In short, bidirectional charging, or V2G-equipped electric vehicles, act as Energy Storage Systems when they are parked and connected to a charger. This technology has long been hailed for its potential to improve the efficiency and value of intermittent renewable energy like solar and wind. However, widespread adoption has been impeded by technology roadblocks.
Pecan Street recently completed the first trial of a Vehicle to Grid (V2G) system in Texas as part of the Austin SHINES project. During the first year of the demonstration phase, Pecan Street successfully had the vehicle participate as a Behind the Meter (BTM) asset to aid Austin Energy in reducing its peak load during ERCOT’s Four Coincident Peak (4CP) events. Additionally, Pecan Street was able to show the viability of V2G systems that prioritize driver needs by ensuring availability of a minimum driving range at all times and demonstrating that no significant battery degradation occurred from the daily charge/discharge events.
The project shows the potential value of V2G by demonstrating how electric vehicles can respond to discharge calls in the summer when outdoor energy storage systems were unavailable during critical peak events due to high temperatures. The project also demonstrated the successful use of an EV for both energy storage and transportation applications. However, we identified challenges that suggest that the market is not fully prepared to deploy this technology. Our hope is that by identifying these challenges we have laid the foundation for addressing these issues and accelerating the deployment of this technology to market.
About Austin SHINES
Austin’s Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) is a DOE-funded project that integrates energy storage at distribution feeders in order to increase the amount of solar generation. The project team developed and deployed Energy Storage Systems at utility, commercial, and residential levels. These assets are all controlled by Doosan’s Distributed Energy Management Optimizer (DERO) platform.
