Energy, Society, and the Environment/Concentrated Solar Power BEVs

This covers Battery electric vehicles and the prevention of battery degradation due to vehicle to grid systems

What is vehicle to grid technology?

It is a system where a consumer of battery electric vehicles to discharge their vehicles to supply energy back to the electrical grid when their vehicles are not in use. This is done by the help of signals and the time of the day which could help inform systems whether to direct the power to the vehicle or to draw energy out of the vehicle to supply the grid with energy to help with supply load from power plants. Vehicles would be charged up and ready to be utilized upon the users set time and will have enough energy to power the car for emergencies.

Vehicle to grid implementation helps majorly with the environment as a certain aspect would be overcome with them help of them. With the use of vehicle to grid systems on a larger scale would contribute towards Decarbonisation as it would lead to a decrement in use of coal powered stations world wide and with the same help, it would bring up efficiency in the power grid lines as they would help power houses, businesses, etc in case of a power outage or can also be used as a back up power source during natural disasters where it would be too dangerous to the grid to be operational and also to humans during a situation

One of the main concerns of introducing vehicle to grid systems is that different manufacturers tend to use proprietary changing solution rather than a universal which would be a hinderance. To over come this, an agreement would have to be made between vehicle manufacturers to install a universal connector port to their vehicles to make the implementation quicker. An additional concern would be controlling discharge/charge speeds and voltage as it may differ per vehicle or the V2G systems would need to have a voltage regulator. It is recommended that slower charging systems would be a better solution as this would help to elongate the life of the battery packs installed in vehicles.

Battery degradation due to vehicle to grid systems

It is a known issue where lithium-ion batteries are known to degrade over time whether being used or not. Daily use of the batteries will help keep the life cycle on the better health side, but it is a known issue whereas the batteries age, they lose the capacity of charge they can hold. Many factors must be taken into considerations, such as age of the vehicle, how often the vehicle is used, how often the battery is charged, temperature, etc. This needs to be made as efficient as possible with minimal degradation as lithium ion would not be good for the environment. Battery aging is normally calculated using the calendar aging and cycle loss formulas, which is:

Q calendar loss = f e−Ea/RT t ½

Q cycle loss = B1· e B2·Irate ·Ah

B1 = a ·T 2 +b ·T +c

B2 = d ·T +e (Wang et al., 2012)

Combining the calendar loss and cycle loss formula, you would obtain the overall remaining life cycle for the battery.

Bibliography

1) Kempton, W. and Tomic, J., 2004. Vehicle-to-grid power implementation: From stabilizing the grid to supporting large-scale renewable energy. [ebook] Delaware. Available at:  [Accessed 10 March 2021]. Tsoleridis, C., Chatzimisios, P. and Fouliras, P., 2016. (PDF) Vehicle-to-Grid Networks: Issues and Challenges. [online] ResearchGate. Available at:  [Accessed 10 March 2021].

2) Virta.global. 2021. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G): Everything you need to know. [online] Available at:  [Accessed 10 March 2021].

3)Wang, D., Coignard, J., Zeng, T., Zhang, C., & Saxena, S. (2012). Quantifying electric vehicle battery degradation from driving vs. vehicle-to-grid services [Ebook]. Elsevier. Retrieved 28 March 2021, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775316313052.

4) Current.eco 2022. EV Glossary - V2G https://www.current.eco/ev-glossary/vehicle-to-grid-v2g