Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | MARCH 2022 | 41 required, alongside new innovations to man- age charging times." Creating a 'replicable gold standard' While Kochman says EVs alone will never be the "panacea" for reaching net zero, he thinks they demonstrate what's possible when it comes to tangible, sustainable, low carbon innovation. "With businesses buying 58% of all new vehicles in the UK, it will be commercial vehicles that determine the speed of the transition to low carbon transport," he tells Utility Week Innovate. "Companies such as Royal Mail and Uber no doubt recognise the impact their emis- sions have on the environment and their involvement in Optimise Prime serves as a great example of the commitment they and many like-minded companies are making to address their impact on the planet." Kochman adds that he feels projects like Optimise Prime can help create a "replicable gold standard" in the global rollout of EVs. "In the UK alone, the accelerated adop- tion of commercial EVs will save 2.7 mil- lion tonnes of CO2, equivalent to London's entire bus fleet running for four years," he says. "It's crucial that we pass on the tools to benefit and the data collected is helping to develop practical ways of overcoming the challenges that are currently holding back many of the world's biggest commercial vehicle operators from making the switch to EVs." Need for up-front investment and collaboration Conclusions from Optimise Prime thus far suggest that "centrally coordinated" and "intelligent" innovation to steer EV-charging behaviour could create value in a number of ways. "First, it could allow even more effec- tive peak shaving and thus greatly reduce grid investments," Kochman says. "Second, it could allow a reshaping of the load curve beyond peak shaving to optimise generation cost – shi–ing demand from peak to base- load generation. And, revving charging up at times of excess solar and wind generation or throttling it down at moments of low renew- ables production could help to integrate a larger share of renewable power production. "Finally, by providing demand response services, smart charging could offer valu- able system-balancing – frequency response – services." Future innovation in this space would involve more vehicle-to-grid (V2G) plans, Kochman adds, which he states would not only shi– the power demand from EVs but make it possible for them to feed energy back into the grid under certain conditions. Pilot studies, such as Project Sciurus – billed as the world's largest domestic V2G rollout with more than 300 chargers installed – have shown a substantial willingness of EV owners to participate in coordinated smart charging, Kochman explains. "The total value created can be up to several hundred pounds per EV each year, depending on local specifics," he says. Project Sciurus's headlines included an aver- age customer reward of £420 per year from selling surplus energy back to the grid – with one earning almost £800, for example. "To realise these benefits, energy play- ers must make some up-front investments in smart-charging infrastructure and work to achieve effective collaboration with other stakeholders," Kochman says. "But once these aims are established, EVs will no longer pose a cause for concern from an energy sys- tem perspective. Instead they will become a source of benefit by making the system more cost-effective, resilient, and green." Accounting for an uneven rollout However, though two years' worth of findings from Optimise Prime thus far suggest that the widespread adoption of EVs is unlikely to create a power demand crisis, Kochman cau- tions that the potential reshaping of the load curve – an increase in evening peak loads as people plug in when they return home from work – marks a significant bump in the roll- out's road. While he claims that, UK-wide, this will represent a relatively small percentage, the changing curve will create challenges at a local level due to the fact that the regional spread of EVs will most likely vary—in some cases significantly. "Suburban areas will likely become early EV adoption hotspots," he explains. "There- fore, even at still low nationwide EV penetra- tion levels, local pockets with significant EV populations will probably emerge. "These residential hotspots and other concentration points of EV charging – such as public EV fast-charging stations and com- mercial vehicle depots – will see significant increases in local peak loads." Yet Kochman says many energy compa- nies already have solutions in progress to address these issues and, with the data col- lected by the trial, will have the insight to make up-front investments in smart-charg- ing infrastructure and work to achieve effec- tive collaboration with other stakeholders. Yet Kochman cautions that beyond peak- load increases, the highly "volatile and spiky" load profiles of public fast-charging stations will require additional system balancing. Stuart Stone, editor, Utility Week Innovate "To realise these benefits, energy players must make some up-front investments in smart-charging infrastructure and work to achieve effective collaboration with other stakeholders." Martin Kochman, vice president head of customers and industries, Hitachi Vantara A key question is where commercial vehicles are most likely to be charged, dispersed at employees' homes or concentrated at a company's depot

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