Electric trains and electric cars will soon share the same power grid, but that grid has no way to store the surge of energy needed during rush hour. This project tackles that missing piece: it develops technology to store electricity at railway linesides and in car batteries parked at station lots, then models how to use that stored energy to smooth out demand spikes. The problem is that fossil fuels naturally store energy, decoupling when fuel is produced from when it is burned. Electricity lacks that buffer, so peak commuting times stress the supply network. The research asks whether second-life EV batteries and new batteries placed beside tracks can absorb and release power on both a twice-daily commuter cycle and a minute-by-minute vehicle scale. If successful, the work could reduce strain on the national grid without building new power plants. It would also create a practical use for old EV batteries before recycling, and test whether drivers will allow their car batteries to serve as temporary grid storage while they commute by train. The project includes consumer acceptance studies and environmental life-cycle analysis alongside the engineering.
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The focus of the research proposed is on electrically powered rail transport systems and electric road vehicles (EVs), and extends to the power supply network which supports them. The convergence over coming years of both road and rail transport on electric power with reduced dependence on fossil fuels offers great potential benefits, but also has risks from dependence on a single fuel type and peak demand stress on its underlying supply network. Although fossil fuels have environmental drawbacks they have the advantage of offering inherent energy storage, thereby desynchronising time of energy use from its supply, and smoothing demands on the supply network. This is not the case for electricity use in which there are currently only limited means to smooth and reduce demand. The proposed research addresses both the technology to store electric energy in a form suited to transport use, and the modelling to understand how to use the technology to reduce overall energy demand. Transport energy demand reduction can be viewed at two timescales: (i) a twice daily demand caused by rush hour commuting, and (ii) minute by minute variations in demand as required by individual vehicles. Both timescales pose tractable research questions which can be addressed by energy storage. The work will examine the technical issues surrounding the use of both new batteries, and second life (old) EV batteries as line-side storage. This study will be complimented and enhanced with the addition of research on through-life environmental issues, and the consumer acceptance and legislatory constraints surrounding this use. In addition, the novel use of EVs in a road to rail (R2R) energy exchange scenario will provide an opportunity to explore the use of in-car EV batteries as energy storage when parked in rail station car parks, and address the implications of this use on the consumers, together with the consumer acceptability. The research will be accomplished through eight interrelated work packages: WP1: Techno-economic supply chain analysis of energy storage technologies for application in UK rail and road transport WP2: Optimising transport network operation for R2R energy exchange WP3: Power network simulation WP4: Versatile line-side storage demonstration WP5: Demonstrator data analysis and second-life EV battery WP6: Attractiveness to users and incentives for implementation WP7: R2R Communications, control and interfacing WP8: Project Management
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