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

  • April 27, 2015
    UK city pilots I2V technology
    New technology which communicates between traffic signals and motorists to help the way they drive is being rolled out across Newcastle as part of a joint cooperative project with Siemens. In the first pilot of its kind in the UK, the system links an in-vehicle communication system directly with the city’s urban traffic management centre (UTMC), the infrastructure will ‘communicate’ directly with motorists, giving certain vehicles priority at junctions. Initially, the system has been fitted to non-emerge
  • April 17, 2012
    Historic milestone for EVs claimed
    Utah State University Research Foundation's Energy Dynamics Laboratory has announced that it has operated the first high-power, high-efficiency wireless power transfer system capable of transferring enough energy to quickly charge an electric vehicle. The lightweight, low-profile system demonstrated 90 per cent electrical transfer efficiency of five kilowatts over an air gap of 10 inches. The demonstration at EDL's North Logan, Utah, facility further validates that electric vehicles can efficiently be charg
  • April 30, 2014
    FTA, BMW support UK government funding for green cars
    The UK government has announced plans to invest US$840 million ultra-low emission vehicle industry. It is hoped that this will help drivers both afford and feel confident about using electric cars. Announcing the funding during a visit to the Transport Research Laboratory, Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister said: “Owning an electric car is no longer a dream or an inconvenience. Manufacturers are turning to this new technology to help motorists make their everyday journeys green and clean.”
  • April 23, 2012
    VW presents electric mobility research
    Volkswagen, in cooperation with six project partners and the German Ministry of the Environment, is presenting the current status of the ‘Fleet study in electric mobility’ that was initiated in July 2008. The primary goal of the project, which runs until June 2012, is to consistently utilise renewable energy sources for electrically powered vehicles. Within the framework of the fleet study, Volkswagen is using a total of 20 of the latest generation Golf Variant TwinDrive cars as research vehicles.