Skip to main content

UK research team aims to develop smart electric vehicle car park

Cenex, the UK’s first Centre of Excellence for low carbon and fuel cell technologies, is to be part of the team carrying out a project to establish the feasibility of turning a Solihull car park into a MW-scale battery to provide power on demand to the electricity grid. Part funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, the 12-month Net-Form project seeks to develop a secure, dynamic data management platform that collects, aggregates and optimises energy collected by large populations of grid-connected
March 3, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
Cenex, the UK’s first Centre of Excellence for low carbon and fuel cell technologies, is to be part of the team carrying out a project to establish the feasibility of turning a Solihull car park into a MW-scale battery to provide power on demand to the electricity grid. Part funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, the 12-month Net-Form project seeks to develop a secure, dynamic data management platform that collects, aggregates and optimises energy collected by large populations of grid-connected electric vehicle batteries at a single location.
 
Working in partnership with Encraft, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, Costain, Aston University and Western Power Distribution, Cenex will offer guidance on vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology and work with EV owners. The Net-Form project will evaluate the opportunity to provide a managed charging service and income to EV owners, who could provide access to their vehicles via a secure mobile application.
 
The sixth V2G project Cenex is contributing to, Net-Form is unique in that it integrates and analyses diverse sets of data and time-sensitive information to optimise the energy system in a non-invasive way. Cenex hopes this feasibility study will shed new light on how EV owners can be expected to interact with the grid, and shape what V2G infrastructure looks like in UK cities and towns.

Related Content

  • SCANaCAR and VideoBadge counter parking’s prickly problems.
    June 4, 2014
    Colin Sowman discovers how the latest systems can boost productivity and reduce conflict in parking enforcement. Parking enforcement is something of a ‘Cinderella’ service for local authorities: while necessary to keep the roads open and the traffic flowing, it is an expensive operation and can be loss-making. It is also labour intensive and parking enforcement officers are routinely verbally abused and sometimes physically attacked. Some authorities are now looking to automate parking enforcement in orde
  • Cross referencing data sets reveals now decision support information
    November 18, 2014
    Combining previously unrelated sets of data can provide an in-depth view of travel patterns. "Through the use of analytical tools, Urban Insights seeks to help transportation organisations benefit from the vast amounts of detailed data they collect every day.”
  • Most EV charging ‘takes place at home’
    July 30, 2015
    New analysis by plug-in vehicle campaign Go Ultra Low suggests that British motorists could no longer have to rely on the conventional petrol station. More than 90 per cent of electric vehicle (EV) charging takes place at home while total charging volumes have almost tripled since 2014, according to new usage data from leading infrastructure provider Chargemaster. Coupled with bumper uptake of plug-in vehicles – more than 14,500 were registered in the first half of 2015 – the new findings point to the po
  • How can US transportation be ‘re-envisioned’?
    October 17, 2019
    In her address to this year’s ITS America Annual Meeting, congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, called for a ‘re-envisioning’ of transportation. Her speech is below – and ITS International asks a number of US experts what they would like to see ‘re-envisioned’…

    I would like to welcome  ITS America to the nation’s capital.