The development of electric vehicles was primarily driven by the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and reduce environmental impact. But as it turned out, electric vehicles have another advantage over cars with internal combustion engines.
During massive power outages, they can feed energy back into the grid – in effect, acting as powerful charging stations. This happened during a power outage in Canberra. There, during a severe storm, the power supply to tens of thousands of homes was interrupted. Then, the reserves in the batteries of electric vehicles were used to supply energy to the Australian grid.
«This is the first time in the world that this type of vehicle has been demonstrated to be used in an emergency situation,» said senior researcher Dr. Bjorn Sturmberg of the Australian National University. «It shows that electric vehicles can provide the backup we need in an emergency like this».
He said that his research team has a fleet of 51 electric vehicles across Canberra. When connected to the grid, they are able to monitor its condition and can quickly provide short-term «energy assistance» to restore the balance of the system in case of a shortage of electricity in the national grid.
«These are essentially large batteries on wheels,» says the research team.
During the power outage, 16 electric vehicles were connected to the grid in Canberra. Immediately after the power outage, these vehicles began to supply electricity to the grid as programmed. The electric vehicles provided support to the grid for about 10 minutes.
«In total, they provided 107 kW of support to the national grid», Sturmberg added.
According to the researcher, the event, which took place in February, was the first real test of electric vehicles and chargers.
«To put this in perspective, 105,000 vehicles responding in this way would fully provide the backup power needed for the entire ACT (Australian Capital Territory with a population of 339,000) and NSW (New South Wales with a population of about 8.2 million). For context, just under 100,000 electric vehicles were sold in Australia last year,» Sturmberg emphasized.
Source: interestingengineering