Germany's Power Grid Could Handle 1 Million Electric Vehicles

Dec 08, 2010 - Renewable Energy Focus

The National Electromobility Platform’s Charging Infrastructure and Network Integration Working Group’s interim report finds that the future development of Smart Grids offers new perspectives and opportunities.

In the future, electric vehicles could be used to as storage devices and help balance supply and demand. This would also ensure better integration of green and renewable electricity.

Smart meters would make it possible to charge the vehicles’ batteries at times when renewable energy output exceeds system demand, such as on windy nights. The vehicles could be powered by green and renewable electricity owing to planned increases in the country’s renewable energy capacity.

The members of the working group expect rapid advances in charging technology. By 2020, cable-free inductive charging and higher-voltage direct-current charging could make charging faster and more convenient. This would make e-mobility more attractive to motorists and increase its applications.

“It would be a mistake to set the technology bar too high for charging stations,” says the working group’s Chairman, Klaus-Dieter Maubach, member of the E.ON AG Board of Management.

“What we need right now are pragmatic, cost-effective solutions that will make e-mobility viable in the marketplace.”

The volume of data exchanged between a vehicle and the network can be gradually expanded going forward. As a smart charging infrastructure will not be necessary until a certain number of vehicles are on the road, deploying this infrastructure is a medium-term objective. The charging infrastructure installed now should be capable of being retrofitted with smart technology so that it can later be integrated in a smart grid.

Integrating up to 1 million electric cars by 2020 will generally not be problem for the power grid. Only in cases of a locally high density of electric cars could isolated segments of the grid be overloaded and possibly require upgrading.

Nevertheless, the addition of new load (like electric vehicles) and especially the growth of intermittent generation resources (like renewable energy) are fundamentally transforming the energy system. Today’s infrastructure can only support this transformation to a limited degree.

“Deploying smart controls across the network is necessary, in part to ensure that electric vehicles can be powered by green electricity. Smart-grid technology is already available today,” Wolfgang Dehen, member of the Siemens AG Managing Board and CEO of Siemens Energy Sector, says. “Germany must rapidly lay the groundwork for deploying a smart grid.”

The working group recommends that the necessary investments should be factored into Germany’s incentive-based network regulation scheme.

One million electric cars would consume at most 2 TWh of electricity a year. According to current forecasts of renewable energy growth, Germany will produce significantly more than 100 TWh of green and renewable electricity in 2020. Theoretically, this would be enough to supply 50 million electric vehicles.