Can a city run on car batteries? The 'vehicle-to-grid' idea might just work

When Damien Maguire moved to the countryside outside Dublin, he struggled to keep the lights on at home because of the town’s constant power outages. He found a solution inside his electric cars: their batteries.

A tinkerer who posts videos of his hand-built vehicles on Youtube, Maguire devised a wiring system that lets him suck power out of them when they’re parked in the garage. Now that the house and cars are connected, he can also use the batteries to store energy from his backyard solar panels, another power source that’s not totally reliable given Ireland’s weather.

“You have the light-bulb moment,” said the 41-year-old electrical engineer. “There’s a big battery in the car, so how about I use that?”

An even bigger light-bulb moment is happening for utilities and automakers, who want to use the batteries inside electric cars as storage for the entire public power grid. The idea, known as “vehicle-to-grid,” is to someday have millions of drivers become mini electricity traders, charging up when rates are cheap and pumping energy back into the grid during peak hours or when the sun simply isn’t shining. If it works — and it’s a big if — renewable energy could get much cheaper and more widely used.

Electric vehicle may lead to increased power demand of 160-bn units by 2030

E-mobility is likely to be a key "demand driver of electricity" and "positive for coal-based generation" and electric vehicles (EV) could result in incremental power demand of nearly 160 billion units by 2030, according to a Coal Vision 2030 document.

"It is estimated that EVs could emerge as a key segment in the overall automobile sector.
Assuming a market share of 15 per cent by 2030, EVs can result in incremental power demand of nearly 160 billion units by 2030," the study said.

Coal India Limited (CIL) has commissioned this study to assess the future demand scenarios for the coal sector up to 2030.

How electric vehicles could take a bite out of the oil market

When will cars powered by gas-guzzling internal combustion engines become obsolete? Not as soon as it seems, even with the latest automotive news out of Europe.
First, Volvo announced it would begin to phase out the production of cars that run solely on gasoline or diesel by 2019 by only releasing new models that are electric or plug-in hybrids. Then, France and the U.K. declared they would ban sales of gas and diesel-powered cars by 2040. Underscoring this trend is data from Norway, as electric models amounted to 42 percent of Norwegian new car sales in June.

European demand for oil to propel its passenger vehicles has been falling for years. Many experts expect a sharper decline in the years ahead as the shift toward electric vehicles spreads across the world. And that raises questions about whether surging electric vehicle sales will ultimately cause the global oil market, which has grown on average by 1 to 2 percent a year for decades and now totals 96 million barrels per day, to decline after hitting a ceiling.

Energy experts call this concept “peak oil demand.” We are debating when and if this will occur.

A forecast with caveats

The International Energy Agency (IEA), which represents 29 oil-importing industrial countries, produces bellwether forecasts that foresee electric cars phasing in slowly. Its baseline projection envisions 150 million electric vehicles on the world’s roads by 2030, or about 10 percent of all passenger vehicles at that point. In comparison, only two million electric vehicles are operating today – 0.2 percent of the 1.2 billion on the road. The IEA estimates this shift will save nearly two million barrels per day of oil, relative to its business-as-usual projection of the world using at least 70 million barrels of oil per day for transportation by 2040. That consumption level would mark a 30 percent increase from roughly 54 million barrels now.
READ MORE