https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/features/fossil-free-quest-how-renault-revolutionising-portuguese-island
[Not the first island to travel this road. Kodiak Island (Alaska) has
moved off fossil fuels, and Kauai Island (Hawaii) has started the
transition (92% electricity generation from fossil fuels in 2008
reduced to 56% by 2017, and is now installing more batteries to store
more of the energy produced from photovoltaic panels). Now that PV plus
battery storage is less expensive than coal or diesel, expect this
transition to accelerate.
images and links in online article]
The fossil-free quest: How Renault is revolutionising a Portuguese island
We visit the small Portuguese territory of Porto Santo where a growing
fleet of electric Renaults is contributing to an ambitious island-wide
quest to become greener
Richard Bremner
24 June 2019
Cars and the environment – they’re a big part of the problem, aren’t
they? We all know that, of course, even if their contribution to global
warming is slightly smaller than general opinion would have us believe.
But cars have certainly never been part of the solution, all of them
requiring energy generated from somewhere, whether they’re fuelled with
petrol, diesel, compressed natural gas or hydrogen. Most of that energy
will generate CO2, and all of it will be expended driving only the car
and its systems. That’s the way it is now, and the way it has been for
the 120-plus years that the car has been around.
But electric vehicles have the potential to do more than this, as
Renault is demonstrating on a tiny island 30 miles off the coast of
Madeira. They are zero emission at the tailpipe and potentially zero
emission from well to wheel if their energy source is renewable. And
they can also help electricity grids make fuller use of unreliable
renewables. Porto Santo is now what Renault and its pioneering partners
are calling a live lab. That lab is harnessing the batteries of a
growing fleet of electric Zoes and Kangoos to help smooth out the peaks
and troughs of Porto Santo’s multiple electricity generation systems.
The overall aim for Porto Santos itself is to become fossil fuel-free,
explains Madeira’s assistant director of the economy, Patricia Dantas,
by reducing and eventually eliminating the yearly consumption of the
500,000 litres of diesel needed to run the grid’s generators. The
project is part of the European 20-20-20 strategy aiming to reduce CO2
emissions by 20% from their 1990 levels by 2020, while generating 20% of
energy demands from renewable resources.
There’s a long way to go. Renewables contribute 15% of Porto Santo’s
electricity needs – solar accounting for 11% of that, wind 4%. The
island’s geography is ideal for both sources and they are being
expanded, supported by electric cars being plugged into the network. The
benefits of doing this are considerable, as Eric Feunteun, Renault’s
electric vehicle programme director, explains with an example.
13 May 2018 was a sunny, windy day in Germany and, critically, a Sunday,
he relates. That meant that electricity consumption was much lower than
for a weekday and there was too much renewable energy for the grid to
handle – much of it consequently wasted. “They couldn’t balance the
grid,” Feunteun says. “They had to disconnect the wind turbines but
still pay for what they generated.” Incidents like this – and they are
common – are why electricity grids have changed their attitude to EVs.
“Originally EVs weren’t liked by the grid operators because they have
very centralised power generation,” says Feunteun. “Now they want them
as a balancing tool, because we’re moving towards having a lot of
production points (renewables, home energy generation) and a lot of
consumption points (EV chargers) and the network needs more resilience.
The grid operators are now saying we need you (the EV users) to make
renewables work.”
“One cannot grow without the other,” adds Feunteun. “There’s a double
benefit from EVs – no CO2 at the tailpipe, and they can help reduce the
CO2 of power generation.”
“Everything is about smoothing,” confirms José Cotrim, distribution
director of energy supplier Empresa de Electricidade da Madeira. In
other words, smoothing the supply of energy across the multiple sources
of diesel, solar and wind energy. The task is eased by the storage
provided by ‘second-life’ batteries, from the island’s mono-directional
EVs, which can be charged when there’s surplus energy generation and not
charged during shortfalls, and the more flexible bi-directional EVs,
which can supply the grid during a dip in renewable generation or a
spike in electricity demand. While this sounds relatively simple on
paper, the business of reliably managing a complicated, multi-source
grid whose output is perpetually altered by drifting clouds and
capricious winds is no small matter.
Which is why The Mobility House is also a partner. Based in Munich and
Silicon Valley, it’s one of the first European companies to provide
charging and energy management systems for electric vehicle fleets. In
essence, its monitoring systems and algorithms manage an EV fleet’s
power consumption from the grid, not only smoothing the grid’s output
but also enabling the fleet operator to avoid battery charging during
expensive, high-demand periods. The system also manages the second-life
power packs on Porto Santo.
These are sourced from scrapped EVs and harnessed for the smoothing
task, although there are fewer packs available than forecast. “Electric
vehicle batteries are lasting longer than expected, so the supply is
small,” says Feunteun. The best sources at the moment are crashed cars
and the French Post Office, whose electric vehicles last only six years
not because of the battery but because they lead such hard lives. Using
them as part of an energy storage system postpones the day when they are
recycled, and extracts a lot more use from them. “Second-life batteries
are a pillar of the system,” says Cotrim. “They stabilise the grid,
integrate it better and can be used to regulate the local voltage.”
Some second-life packs are already in use here, three housed in a
nondescript building from which a rather fine palm tree erupts, several
sourced from dead EVs in Madeira. Six batteries have been hooked up so
far, their energy potential sufficient to meet the electricity demands
of 50 houses for 30 minutes. They could have 10-year second lives, it’s
reckoned, although this remains an unknown.
Also unknown is how long it will be before the energy buffering
capabilities of EVs are in widespread use. There’s a long, long way to
go before we see large-scale, adaptive electricity grids that not only
generate power but shuffle it around the battery packs of electric
vehicles to overcome the irregular energy generation of renewables. But
it clearly makes huge sense to use EV batteries as storage buffers.
From being – literally – a potentially massive drain on national grids,
electric vehicles are going to be a vital element in the harnessing of
renewables to real-world demand. The Porto Santo project is a tiny step
towards this – but, as this so-far-modest fleet of Renaults proves, one
with unquestionable benefits.
Growing the vehicle-to-grid network
Part-decarbonising Porto Santo with electric vehicles is one thing, but
how will the virtuous circle of EV energy storage get scaled up? Renault
is already launching a similar project on Belle-Île-en-Mer in France,
with another on Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and has introduced one of
the first mainland European vehicle-to-grid schemes, in Utrecht in the
Netherlands. Similar localised schemes will appear in France, Germany,
Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark too. Why not Britain? “Because there are
many energy suppliers,” says Renault’s Eric Feunteun, “so it’s more
difficult.”
More obstacles impede these schemes, he adds, one being that not all EVs
are bi-directional (including almost all electric Renaults). Another is
that there are no specification rules for bi-directional EVs,
potentially introducing compatibility issues, while a third is the need
to “change customer mindsets”.
But there are incentives, including the fact that it’s possible to make
€300 annually from selling your EV’s surplus energy to the grid. That’s
fine for owners of EVs with bi-directional capability; those with EVs
that can only consume from the grid are nevertheless incentivised
(modestly) with €60 annually if they allow their car to stop drawing
current during spikes in demand.
Sadly, it’s not practical to retrofit a uni-directional EV with a
bi-directional capability, reckons Feunteun. “The labour alone would
kill the idea,” he says. [Using vehicle-mounted batteries to store
energy for use by the grid at peak demand times presents a number of
issues, which I can list for anyone who is interested.]
--
Darryl McMahon
Freelance Project Manager (sustainable systems)
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