The UK’s first commercially operating virtual power plant (VPP) using only electric vehicles has received funding to scale up its efforts.
With an additional £295K, totalling £754K of funding from Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation’s Prospering from the Energy Revolution programme, ev.energy will scale up localised virtual power plants to stabilise the grid using electric vehicles and load curtailment.
Localised systems to balance electricity demand, storage and supply are likely to play a vital role in helping the UK get to next zero. Innovative services using electric vehicles to provide flexibility to the grid have great potential and we look forward to supporting the scale-up and wider demonstration of ev.energy’s Maximising Grid Services project.”
Damien Kelly, innovation lead at Innovate UK.
What’s a VPP?
A VPP (virtual power plant) is a small to medium scale network of decentralised energy generators and energy storage systems that combine to create a reliable power supply. A VPP has prediction, analysis, and optimisation technologies that can send power to the grid and balance energy demands in real-time.
So what?
With electric vehicles contributing to peak grid demand, ev.energy’s VPP automatically pauses charging when the grid is congested using smart algorithms.
In its first UK commercial trial, it reduced power consumption from EV charging by 90%, reducing strain to help balance the grid with load curtailment.
With Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) not commercially available to EV drivers at home, load curtailment via the ev.energy VPP offers EV drivers a way to reduce regional energy demand. Drivers earn reward points worth up to £60 per year in retail vouchers.
You can find out more about ev.energy here.
