Car manufacturer Nissan has unveiled a brand new scheme designed to allow owners of electric vehicles to sell electricity generated by their vehicles’ batteries back to National Grid.
The scheme is directed towards owners of Nissan’s Leaf electric car and will involve the use of various “vehicle to grid” power points installed in cities around the UK. According to Nissan, it is expected that around 100 of these points will be installed up and down the country.
When plugged into these special ‘vehicle to grid’ charging points, National Grid will be able to take electricity from the cars during peak hours, and then will make sure that the cars are fully charged and operational by the following morning, so long as surplus electricity is available.
Full details of the scheme are yet to be revealed, but the basic functionality has been outlined. Nissan uploaded this video to Youtube explaining the project:
Owners of the electric vehicles will be able to opt into the scheme voluntarily and if they do so, they will be paid by National Grid for the privilege of access to their vehicle’s power.
With around 18,000 Nissan electric vehicles operational in the UK at the moment, if every one was connected to the grid at once, the output would be comparable to a 180 megawatt power station.
Nissan Europe chairman Paul Wilcox is due to fully announce the scheme at the Financial Times Future of the Car summit on Wednesday.
According to the paper, he will say that “the potential scale of vehicle-to-grid technology is enormous”, and will described the scheme as “herald[ing] an exciting era for energy management in this country”.
National Grid director Steven Holliday praised the scheme as an important development in terms of diversifying power sources in the UK.
He said: “At National Grid, we are constantly looking to the future to ensure we have the capacity to meet national energy demand.
“That is why we support innovative technologies and pioneering projects such as this one that have the potential to make a real difference to the way we manage energy supply and demand.”
In another, concurrent innovation relating to the provision of electricity to homes in the UK, Nissan are set to unveil a new home battery, using the same technology as their electric vehicles.
The xStorage device can take power both from solar panels and from the mains. When plugged into the mains, it will take in electricity overnight when, as it is during non-peak hours, it is cheaper, and then will use the stored energy to power the house during the day, reducing energy bills.
The release of the xStorage unit follows a similar release from Tesla last year, called the Powerwall.
