Nissan and multinational power company Enel, will launch a major vehicle-to-grid (V2G) trial where Nissan electric vehicles will store and sell electricity back to the grid. If the program expands it could be enough to power the UK, Germany and France.
The trial will work by installing and connecting one hundred V2G units at locations agreed by private and fleet owners of the Nissan LEAF and e-NV200 electric van. By giving Nissan electric vehicle owners the ability to plug their vehicles into the V2G system, owners will have the flexibility and power to sell stored energy from their vehicle battery back to the National Grid.
Not only will Nissan electric vehicle owners be able to play an active role in grid stability, providing an alternate source of income, but it will revolutionise how energy is supplied to the grid. Once scaled up, the V2G technology can become a game-changer for owners of Nissan EV in the UK as they become fully fledged and active participants in the UK energy market.
This endeavour is part of Enel and Nissan’s commitment to support the entire EV ecosystem, going beyond the car itself and delivering new services to the energy industry. Moreover, there will be an increasing number of EVs on the roads across Europe in the future and it is vital that V2G technology is rolled out to ensure the grid can satisfy the demands made upon it for increased energy.
Industry projections show that by 2050 there might be twice as many cars on the road as there is today – a staggering 2.4 billion. Delivering and managing that growth in a way that is sustainable for the world, requires smart thinking.
Nissan and Enel have been looking at ways to use electric vehicles beyond traditional mobility. Nissan electric vehicles will be used for more than just getting from A-to-B. They will turn into clean mobile energy units whose unused power can be sent back to the grid to power homes, offices, schools and hospitals.
Steven Holliday, Non-Executive Director, National Grid, said: “At National Grid we are constantly looking to the future to ensure we have the capacity to meet national energy demand – it’s our job to future proof the national transmission network.
Currently if all 18,000 Nissan electric vehicles in the UK were connected to the energy network, they would generate the equivalent output of a 180 MW power plant. If that was scaled up in a future where all the vehicles on UK roads are electric, vehicle-to-grid technology could generate a virtual power plant of up to 370 GW. This energy capacity would be enough to power the UK, Germany and France.
V2G technology allows electric vehicles to be fully integrated into the electricity grid and will help improve grid capability to handle renewable power, making renewable sources even more widely integrated and affordable. V2G charging infrastructure developed by Enel gives private EV owners and businesses with large EV fleets the opportunity to create mobile energy hubs by integrating their vehicles into the grid. The system works by allowing Nissan EV owners to connect to the grid to charge at low-demand, cheap tariff periods, with an option to then use the electricity stored in the vehicle’s battery at home and at work when costs are higher, or even feed back to the grid which could generate additional revenue for the EV owner.
Nissan and Eaton, have joined forces to unveil a new residential energy storage unit – designed to be the most affordable in the market today. Available to pre-order from September 2016, the ‘xStorage’ solution will give consumers the power to control how and when they use energy in their own homes.
Three years after Nissan introduced electric vehicle and battery manufacturing to Europe, the 50,000th European-built Nissan LEAF has rolled off the production line.