Recipient organisationEdf Energy R&D UK Centre Limited
Funding£3.0M
PeriodMay 2018 — Nov 2020
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Fleet operators control 56% of new vehicle registrations in the UK, and their electric vans and trucks could soon sell power back to the national grid. The V2GO project will test whether this works in practice, running a 20-month trial with at least 100 electric vehicles from fleets including Royal Mail, UPS, DPD, and Oxford County Council. The problem is straightforward: electric vehicles sit idle most of the day, their batteries full of stored energy that could help balance the grid. But fleet operators have no clear business case for letting that energy flow back out. They worry about battery degradation, lost vehicle availability, and whether the financial returns justify the hassle. V2GO aims to replace guesswork with hard data. If the trial succeeds, it could unlock a new revenue stream for fleet operators while helping the grid absorb more renewable energy. Two software tools will be developed: a flexibility assessment toolkit that lets fleet managers quantify potential savings, and a real-time coordination platform that decides which grid services—short-term reserve, frequency response, reactive power—a given fleet should sell at any moment. The project does not build new hardware; it tests whether existing vehicles, chargers, and markets can work together profitably.
View original technical description
V2GO (Vehicle-To-Grid Oxford) will develop, trial and evaluate potential business models, on- and off-vehicle hardware and products and services by engaging with UK fleet operators. Fleet vehicles account for 56% of new registrations and are quickly (i.e., ?3 years) turned over into the private market. A better understanding of fleet operators' attitudes and valuations of different V2G technologies, products and services could create additional pathways for increasing the uptake of Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (ULEVs). The energy storage capacity of electric vehicles (EVs), present new opportunities and value propositions for V2G power system services (e.g., potentially alleviate the need for generation and transmission investments; increasing network efficiency and energy security. Given the size and use patterns of fleets, they could generate economies of scale that will help realise V2G opportunities and maximise their values. V2GO brings together an interdisciplinary consortium of 8 partners from industry and research with expertise in energy and power markets and systems, fleet operation value chains and electric mobility. The project will address three objectives: 1\. To build confidence in and demonstrate the value of V2G to fleet operators; 2\. To engage with and understand ULEV owner's attitudes to V2G services and technologies; 3\. To demonstrate the technical and commercial potential for ULEVs through the power grid and vehicle-to-building to directly and indirectly support the electricity system. These objectives will be met through a real-world demonstrator trial (WP3), a portfolio of research (WP4; WP5), development of V2G business models, products and services (WP2, WP4) and exploitation and dissemination (WP6, WP7). The trial will run for 20 months and involve at least 100 EVs from different sized fleets including Royal Mail, UPS, DPD, DL, EDF Energy, Oxford County Council, University of Oxford and Addisson Lee. Two novel tools will be developed to facilitate the provision of V2G products and services and maximise their value: 1) a flexibility assessment toolkit, allowing fleet managers and V2G aggregators to work together to quantify the potential benefits of fleet electrification, and the added value of providing V2G products and services; and 2) a real-time coordination platform which will assess: a) based on the size and operation of an EV fleet the combination of V2G services that could maximize overall value (e.g., short term operating reserve, firm frequency response, enhanced reactive power services); and b) how fleet operation could potentially be modified to improve value, considering power system and mobility value chains.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know