Managing Plug-In EVs in Grid Services: Global Market Analysis and Forecasts
The plug-in EV (PEV) industry is interested in vehicle grid integration (VGI) potential. The technology enables direct control of PEV charging, and in some cases, discharging. This capability has many potential uses. The most attractive have been to aggregate PEVs in grid service markets to protect distribution grids, integrate renewables generation, and decrease PEV owner energy costs.
Decarbonization drives VGI. This existential force is creating challenges for the automotive and electric power sectors, and VGI is a critical solution. Established automakers are being pushed to increase PEV production, which has proven costly and difficult to move. The electric power sector is pushed to adopt renewables that are difficult to integrate as a result of intermittency issues, and widescale adoption of PEVs presents threats to local distribution assets.
VGI enables automakers to improve the economics of PEV ownership and the electric power sector to buffer intermittent resources to better meet grid demands and balance loads to protect the distribution grid. Although VGI is well-positioned to help solve these problems, industry must overcome significant technical and regulatory hurdles for the technology to succeed.
The technology to reduce load (at the meter/plug level) has long been available and is well established, but doesn’t allow discharge back from vehicle back into the grid.
Typically in the UK today, domestically at least, there is a dual rate meter with the ability to control the time when you switch to lower rate (en masse, by radio). You can get domestic meters which can be remotely controlled individually for rate switching (without being “Smart meters”) and also can signal to attached circuits to switch off; and I suspect that you can do individual control to the new Smart Meters (including full shut off, which is why I won’t get one), and would not be hard to enable the meter to signal to a circuit (e.g. your EV charger) to switch off. Or build basic “smart” capability into the EV charger (make this a statutory requirement for all high speed chargers)
The sort of remote smart control for loads is naturally more evolved for commercial power consumption