Battery storage firm Moixa and National Grid are among the transport and energy organisations working on a project to support vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.
The consortium, which also includes Western Power Distribution, Nissan and Element Energy, aims to incentivise the V2G roll out by sharing increased revenue with drivers of electric vehicles (EVs), owners of smart chargers, managers of charging sites and operators of battery storage.
V2G technology means EVs can feed stored power into the network at times of peak demand – the consortium says 10 new Nissan LEAFs can store as much energy as a 1,000 homes typically consume in an hour.
The group says using the technology to help balance supply and demand could earn around £60 a month per vehicle.
It plans to manage flows of energy to and from EV batteries and aggregate them to function as a virtual power plant, as well as use machine learning to profile drivers’ patterns of behaviour.
Chris Wright, Moixa Chief Technology Officer, said: “Drivers are happy to earn extra money supporting the grid so long as they can use their car normally whenever they want.
“A freelancer who travels long distance at the drop of a hat is very different from a staffer who drives five miles to the office every day. Machine learning allows you to maximise utility around these patterns.”
