For many people who are worried about the environment, an electric car that can be fully charged with clean, renewable energy is the ideal vehicle. For many people, that entails installing a rooftop solar power system that supplies electricity to your house and subsequently your car. Many electric vehicle (EV) owners, however, cannot access rooftop solar power, and those who do must at least occasionally use a different charging location. What should you do to make sure your car receives the most clean electricity possible?
Together with Energy Web, Volkswagen Group has discovered a remedy. They created an algorithm that more accurately aligns EV charging with renewable energy production throughout the day. This solution is important because it may soon represent the new gold standard for EV charging, giving consumers an unmatched degree of selectivity. For example, users can set an EV to charge using wind and solar resources, from assets within a 10 km radius, with a target of 80% charge by 5 pm, all from within the app.
Businesses and governments typically buy clean energy credits to match renewable generation to their annual total usage. Since there is a variable amount of renewable energy on the grid at different times, even while renewable energy is being purchased, it isn’t actually being fully matched to clean energy sources.
Volkswagen ID.4s that were connected to the app and could charge in a smarter, cleaner, greener, and more intentional manner were used by the trial’s partners. Three months were allotted for testing the new system with various charging methods on the vehicles (some just a couple of hours, some several days long). The region around Wolfsburg, Germany, saw the majority of the testing. The majority of the electricity consumed came from local wind and solar farms.
Energy Web is a nonprofit company that specializes in creating energy grid operating systems. According to Jesse Morris, CEO of Energy Web, this is the first time an electric vehicle has ever been charged using a confirmed 24/7-matched clean energy approach at a time when EV adoption is accelerating and charging is putting greater demands on electricity grids than ever before. The goal of this research was to demonstrate how cutting-edge EV charging options can provide EV owners more control over how and when they obtain their energy. For instance, customers can choose to charge using solar and wind resources, using energy resources within a 10 km radius, and target 80 percent charge by 5pm, all from within a user-friendly application, with an accurate analysis of their session’s carbon footprint.
This increases the supply of green electricity to EV drivers more directly, but it also sends the electricity market better price signals and increases demand during periods of increased renewable energy generation.
Although the testing seems to have gone well, the smart green charging option hasn’t yet been implemented widely. Volkswagen Group Innovation is investigating the feasibility of that. It is one thing for a few EV drivers to choose their grid electricity supplier more carefully, but it is quite another for thousands or even millions of EV drivers to be included in such a system.
The fact that firms can more clearly understand how environmentally friendly their fleets are with this level of precision is one benefit that hasn’t really been emphasized. Consumers will be able to produce proof of renewable energy purchases thanks to the Energy Web Chain’s traceable and secure audit trail for transactions, which will in the future make it simple for corporate EV fleets to track precise energy usage for carbon accounting.
The additional charging upgrades were integrated into the Ellis green charging software ( Elli is a charging business under the Volkswagen Group umbrella providing home and enterprise charging solutions). It makes use of the previous 2022 release of Energy Webs open-source 24/7 clean energy toolkit .
on the Energy Web website has more details about the smart green charging trial program.
The featured photo is a gift from Energy Web.
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