Electric car returns energy to grid

Feb 9, 2009 — Arkansas Democrat Gazette

SANDY BAUERS THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Plug-in vehicle runs on batteries that give, take charges

PHILADELPHIA — Willett Kempton’s car has the body of a Toyota Scion xB but not the innards. They’ve been replaced by massive batteries and other electrical components.

The resulting vehicle, developed by Kempton, a renewable energy professor at the University of Delaware, can hit 95 miles an hour and go 120 miles before charging.

As impressive as those numbers are, the car’s real benefit is that it’s not just a user of energy.

It’s also a provider.

The battery in this new breed of electric car can both give and receive, taking a charge and then, through the same electrical cord, sending some of its stored energy back to a hungry electricity grid, as needed.

Kempton’s is the only such two-way electric car in a regional grid that spans Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and some or all of 11 other states, along with the District of Columbia.

But add a few million more - as Kempton and others predict will happen, perhaps within the decade - and things begin to look a whole lot different.

Suddenly, the nation’s automobiles are no longer just a transportation option, but a network of mini-storage devices for electricity.

One car might even power a few nearby homes for a while if the wires go down in a storm.

“Energy storage is not only a nexus between these two titans - the energy and auto industries - it’s a game-changer,” said Edward Kjaer, director of electric transportation for the Southern California Edison utility.

He spoke recently at an electric-car summit at the Valley Forge, Pa., offices of PJM Interconnection, the region’s grid operator. Representatives of more than a dozen electric utilities were there, along with people from three other grid operators, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., and a bevy of think tanks, government agencies and other electric organizations.

They touted the plug-in car as a way to reduce emissions that many scientists say cause global warming, save customers money and wean the United States off foreign oil.

But most of all, they focused on how the next generation ofplug-ins could solve a problem that has troubled the electricity industry: energy storage.

Unlike the water supply system, which has reservoirs to balance supply and demand, the electric system must balance input and output on a near-instantaneous basis.

Right now, the grid operator sends pulses of information every two to four seconds to coal-fired and natural-gas plants in the system, telling them to rev up production. Or slow down.

That prevents the plants from operating most efficiently, much the way a car guzzles more gas when it speeds up and slows down constantly instead of cruising in its sweet spot of fuel efficiency.

Supporters see the new plugin vehicles as a stabilizing addition. They envision thousands or millions of car batteries taking electricity from the grid during low-demand periods, such as overnight, and sending electricity back into the grid at times of heavy demand.

It could help the industry shave the peaks - important, because the whole system has to be sized for the highest demands to avoid brownouts - and fill the valleys,when some power plants might otherwise be slow.

This ability will become far more important, experts say, as the nation moves to increased power from fickle wind and solar sources, which fluctuate with every gust and passing cloud.

How many cars will it take? Even thousands would be a good start, said Terry Boston, PJM’s president and chief executive officer. At the top end, his grid system, which serves 51 million people, could handle 25 million cars in its off-peak hours.

Kempton’s car is a research project owned by the University of Delaware. It’s dubbed the MAGICC car - after the initials of the Mid-Atlantic Grid Interactive Cars Consortium, formed to further develop, test and demonstrate the technology.

It was a star at the recent summit, ensconced in a big tent in the parking lot. The car was plugged in and sucking juice. Then, a PJM official sent out a signal from a grid computer just a few feet away, and within a second a nearby meter started spinning backwards. The car was giving electricity back.

As a custom job, the car cost about $70,000, Kempton said. But he estimated that on the mass market, an electric car like this would cost about $5,000 more than its gas counterpart. NormalScion xBs can be bought for well under $20,000.

What gives this breed of plugin a financial edge is that electric “fuel” costs a fraction of gasoline.

Better still, the car owners could be paid for the electricity they return, perhaps enough to earn back the cost of the car in a few years.

Most owners use their cars just one hour a day. In a “vehicle-togrid” world, “the other 23 hours, that device belongs to the system,” said Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

This would require an enormous investment in recharging infrastructure, but some towns are planning ahead. Austin, Texas, is considering adding plugs to its parking meters. San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose have announced plans to pursue a joint charging system.

The technology is getting there. Chevrolet says it will sell its first plug-in vehicle, the Volt, in November 2010. It won’t be able to give electricity back to the system, but future versions likely will.

By one official’s count, about 15 other electric-car projects are due out by 2012.

“It’s gone beyond the nice science fair project,” said Arshad Mansoor, a vice president of the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute.

To be sure, the fuel of the future has yet to be chosen.

Both car companies represented at the recent summit, Ford and GM, said they were continuing research on hydrogen and natural-gas fuels. And there are more hurdles than anyone cares to count for the development of plug-in cars.

Foremost among them is the battery. The technology has progressed from lead acid to lithium ion, but the batteries are still massive, heavy and expensive. And some observers wonder whether the United States is about to replace foreign oil with foreign batteries.

GM has announced that LG Chem, a Korean company, will make the lithium-ion battery cells for the Volt. But GM does plan to assemble individual cells into multi-cell units in Michigan.

Ford recently said Johnson Controls-Saft will supply the battery system for its production plug-in hybrid electric vehicle beginning in 2012. The Milwaukeebased company is a joint venture between U.S. auto parts maker Johnson Controls Inc. and Parisbased battery producer Saft SA.

Industry observers also note that the United States is ahead in research on new batteries using nanotechnology, seen as a development with much potential.

Business, Pages 21, 24 on 02/09/2009

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