German government wants to use electric car batteries for power storage
A new German research project, which receives a subsidy from the government, will look at how the batteries of electric cars can be used for the temporary storage of energy. For example, green energy generated from wind turbines and solar panels must be made more usable.
Despite the fact that the German consumer has not yet warmed up to electric cars, Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated on Monday that Germany wants to have more than one million electrically powered vehicles on the road by 2020. According to Merkel, a lot of technological progress has been made in recent years, which will lead to price reductions, among other things.
The German government does not give subsidies to buyers of electric cars, but the government does want to invest money in innovation projects in its effort to make its economy greener. One of them has been given the name INEES and includes Volkswagen and the Fraunhofer Institute as participants. During the project, which has a term of three years, twenty participants will receive an electrically powered E-Up from Volkswagen that is equipped with a ‘smart’ battery system. At home they will have access to a bidirectional charger.
Such equipment should make it possible to use the batteries for temporary energy storage when the car is not in use and to supply power back to the grid via a charging point. A link with a ‘smart grid’ is not yet complete: the user still has to indicate via a smartphone application whether his car can be used for energy storage or feed-in.
According to the INEES participants, owners of electric cars can earn money back in the future by offering their vehicle as temporary energy storage. Software is also being developed for this purpose, so that power grid managers can estimate the available storage capacity. Moreover, Germany would need such a capacity because the country increasingly generates green electricity through wind turbines and solar energy, and the yield fluctuates widely. By using electric car batteries as temporary storage, the power grid can have electricity stored there if there is too much, while it can be reclaimed if there is too little.