News about Solar, Wind and alternative green power technologies

In accordance to the April 2010 issue of ScienceDaily electromobility only makes sense if the car batteries are charged by making use of electricity that has been produced from renewable sources. However the supply of green electricity is not sufficient all the time. What can help in such situation is an intelligent charging station that can adapt the charging times in order to suit the energy supply and network capacity.

The objective of Germany is to have around one million electric vehicles on the road by the year 2020 that are powered by energy produced from renewable sources. Moreover, the German environment ministry anticipates that within ten years “green electricity” would make up 30 percent of the totality of the power that is consumed. From an arithmetic point of view, it would be possible to attain a CO2-neutral electromobility. Nevertheless, in fact, it is a hard objective to achieve. When more and more wind and solar energy is included in the power grid, the percentage of electricity that cannot be controlled by merely pressing a button is on the rise. Additionally, there is an increasing risk that the growing number of electric vehicles will initiate extreme surges in demand during the rush hour.

In accordance to Dominik Noeren, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, what they require is a smart grid that is able to carry information as well as power. The grid’s structure needs to change from being a push system that is based on energy demand to become a pull system whose basis is production output. Noeren is of view that electric cars are the ones that are the best equipped to meet this challenge. When they are introduced in great numbers, they have the ability to store much energy. A car is usually parked for no less than 20 hours a day on average. So much time is more than enough to recharge them when the demand for energy is low or when the wind picks up.

The Fraunhofer researchers developed the “smart” charging station. The latter is a device that allows electric vehicles to recharge themselves when the system load is low and the percentage of energy from renewable sources is high. Like this load peaks can be prevented and we can completely exploit the contribution of wind and solar power. Noeren lays much emphasis that for them it is crucial that the end customers are entirely free to choose when they want to recharge their vehicles. They at no time want them to experience any sort of disadvantage from the controlled recharging of their cars’ batteries. That is particularly why Noeren is in favor of electricity rates that are able to adapt to the actual situation in the power grid – ones that are indeed more costly in times of peak demand and especially cheap when there is an excess of renewable energy.

The individual that would be making use of the “smart” charging station would then be able to decide between recharging instantaneously or choosing a less expensive, possibly longer, recharging time. In case the person opts for the second one, all that he will require to do, is enter the time when his car will need to be ready to drive again. Everything else would be taken care of by the charging station, namely, calculating the charges and controlling the recharging process. The cost incurred, the progress of recharging in addition to the quantity of energy used can be tracked via the display by the user.

A presentation of the charging devices will be made by the experts at the Hannover Messe.

Source: Science Daily