The business model of car-network interaction is not yet mature, and the charge-discharge price difference is not stimulating enough. This article is from WeChat official account:Eleven Finance and Economics (ID: caijingEleven) span>, author: Xu Peiyu, editor: Mark, head image from: Vision China
The new car network interactive charging pile can transform electric vehicles from vehicles into “power banks” to transmit power to the grid
If you have an electric car and are willing to use it as a power bank for the power grid, then you can lie down and make money.
Although the money earned is not enough, this somewhat unbelievable scenario has become a reality. According to the information provided by State Grid Electric Vehicle Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as State Grid Electric Vehicle Company) to reporters from Caijing, there are currently 15 Provinces and cities have built 42 V2G projects, 609 V2G terminals, and a total of nearly 4,000 electric vehicles participated in the interaction of the car network. V2G is the abbreviation of Vehicle-to-grid, that is, vehicle-to-grid interaction.
In the V2G mode, electric vehicles can not only adjust the charging time and charging power according to the needs of the grid, but also move like mobileLike the power bank, when the vehicle is stopped, it is discharged through the V2G terminal according to the demand of the power grid.
With the growth of the scale of electric vehicles and the improvement of power battery technology, the attributes of energy devices attached to electric vehicles will become more and more prominent——As a distributed energy storage device, electric vehicles, in addition to daily charging, It can also reversely discharge the power grid.
In China, 2020 is the first year for electric vehicles to become power grid charging treasures. Most of the above-mentioned V2G projects of State Grid Electric Vehicle Company will be completed in 2020. The “New Energy Automobile Industry Development Plan (2021~2035)” issued by the General Office of the State Council in November last year (hereinafter referred to as the “Plan”) has also given policy blessings, clearly proposing to strengthen the energy interaction between new energy vehicles and the power grid, and take advantage of the distributed energy storage of new energy vehicles.
Although the policy direction has been set, V2G still faces challenges such as lack of industry standards and implementation policies to be improved. At present, only the peak-valley difference in electricity prices can be used to make profits. Because the price difference is not large enough, the participation enthusiasm of electric vehicle owners is expected to be limited.
Peng Xiaofeng, director of the Energy Business Department of State Grid Electric Vehicle Company, told the reporter of Caijing that if a long-term price policy can be introduced to support V2G’s participation in green power transactions, grid auxiliary services, and demand-side response, the V2G business model will be More attractive, V2G will have broader prospects.
In addition, V2G development must be built on the basis of the number of electric vehicles and the scale of charging and discharging facilities, which is currently not available. The industry predicts that from 2030 to 2035, the number of electric vehicles, the technical level of batteries, and the construction of charging and discharging facilities will usher in an explosive period, driving the car-network interaction into a mature period.
Car network interaction is already a reality
The China Re Center Vehicle Network Interactive Demonstration Station, located in Xicheng District, Beijing, was put into operation in June last year. It was the country’s first commercial V2G charging and discharging station. There are a total of 12 charge-discharge bidirectional piles on the third and fourth floors of the building. Ordinary electric vehicles can be charged here, and electric vehicles with V2G functions can be discharged to power the building during peak electricity consumption.
The price list published by the China Re Center Demonstration Station shows that the electricity price is in use>
State Grid Electric Vehicle Company provided information to Caijing reporters that from the end of June to the end of December 2020, there were 1,228 smart charging and discharging orders for the demonstration stations of China Re Building, and the cumulative discharge income of all car owners was 15025.13 yuan . Since the station is still in a small-scale pilot application, there are only 94 electric vehicle users participating in charging and discharging.
The China Re Building V2G project has not been officially included in the grid’s peak-shaving auxiliary service catalog. The two-way charging and discharging interactive pile set by the State Grid Electric Vehicle Company in Beijing Renji Building is the first domestic project to be included in the peak-shaving auxiliary service settlement. The vehicle network interactive charging pile resources of the building are incorporated into the peak-shaving auxiliary service of the North China Power Market through the Smart Vehicle Networking platform of the State Grid Corporation of China in an adjustable load resource aggregation mode.
State Grid Electric Vehicle Company has built 42 V2G projects and 609 V2G interactive terminals in 15 provinces and cities including Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. The number of electric vehicles participating in the car network interaction is also gradually increasing. Great Wall, Geely, Guangzhou Automobile, Weilai and other vehicles that have been equipped with car network interaction functions, all models of Weilai can achieve car network interaction.
In Shanghai, the State Grid NIO Chuangxin Port public charging and discharging demonstration power station was put into operation in late September 2020, with a total of 15 two-way interactive piles. The station is invested and constructed by State Grid Electric Vehicle Company and operated by Weilai Automobile Company. Shanghai Chuangxin Port is the global headquarters, R&D center and user experience center of NIO. All employees of NIO are participating in the discharge business of the demonstration station.
Liu Jun, the interactive product manager of Weilai Auto.com, told the Caijing reporter that she would discharge her Weilai electric car twice a week, each time around 30 kilowatt-hours. Different from the demonstration station in Beijing, the car owners get the points in the interactive community of Weilai Automobile for discharging at the station, and each kilowatt-hour of electricity is exchanged for 8 points. Points can be exchanged for event tickets, purchase goods, and pay for charging in this community.
In the Shanghai Chuangxin Port Demonstration Power Station, the electricity discharged by electric vehicles is directly used for other local energy-consuming equipment, and has not yet been incorporated into the auxiliary peak regulation system of the power grid. Liu Jun introduced that Weilai believes that car network interaction can maximize the value of electric vehicle power batteries, and is very optimistic about the development prospects of V2G. Therefore, all its models are equipped with car network interaction functions.
Guangdong Power Grid, a subsidiary of China Southern Power Grid, also plans to explore vehicle-network interaction. Su Zhipeng, deputy general manager of the Guangzhou Power Supply Bureau, said that the implementation of paid peak shaving services for electric vehicles can reduce the power supply of the power grid by 1 million kilowatt-hours each year. Up to 1.5~2.4 million yuan.
Whether it is NorthBeijing is still Shanghai. At present, the development of interactive business between electric vehicles and networks is only a small-scale pilot. The industry believes that the development of V2G is to achieve orderly charging and orderly discharging. Discharge is a new thing, the time for large-scale promotion is not ripe, and orderly charging has the foundation for nationwide promotion.
State Grid Electric Vehicle Company plans to build 100,000 orderly smart charging piles in 2021, including personal piles and public piles. Compared with ordinary charging piles, ordered piles can adjust the charging time and power of vehicles according to the load conditions of the grid, and shift the charging load from peak hours to valley hours. Weilai has also launched activities to encourage car owners to charge orderly in its charging APP and interactive community. Since November last year, thousands of Weilai car owners have tried orderly charging.
Fang Yinliang, vice president of Roland Berger Greater China, the world’s leading strategic consulting company in the automotive industry, told Caijing reporter that the V2G model is a promising business model, but it is expected to be only an exploration and pilot program by 2025. Only later will it be possible to land on a large scale.
Difficulties in car network interaction
The immediate problem for car network interaction is the lack of unified technology and price standards. In the long run, how to shape an attractive business model.
Huang Qili, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, recently stated at the China Electric Vehicle Hundreds Conference that the technical standards for car network interaction have not yet been unified, host manufacturers and charging and discharging operators have different opinions, and there is no price standard for V2G. At the same time, the project could not be promoted smoothly due to the lack of standards and specifications such as power access and fire protection acceptance.
The industry believes that it is not difficult to change one-way charging piles to two-way charging and discharging piles, and the cost and technical requirements of adding vehicle-network interaction functions to electric vehicles are not high. The main technical challenge lies in how to ensure that the battery life of electric vehicles is not affected by the increase in the number of charging and discharging. This is the biggest doubt that electric vehicle owners have about the interactive mode of the vehicle network.
It is the number of charging cycles that determines the service life of a battery. V2G will undoubtedly increase the number of charging and discharging of the battery. State Grid Electric Vehicle Company and Ningde Times, a battery manufacturer, conducted a research on the battery life of V2G under various working conditions, and finally selected a 15kW power V2G DC charging and discharging pile. In addition, State Grid Electric Vehicle Company also cooperates with automobile OEMs to provide additional V2G cycle times warranty conditions for V2G vehicles.
Peng Xiaofeng said that with the continuous advancement of power battery technology, the number of cycles of battery packs produced by domestic head enterprises has generally reached 2000And apply to pilot projects. To formulate a unified national discharge standard, it is also necessary for relevant ministries and commissions, as well as OEMs, battery factories, and pile enterprises to cooperate and verify to ensure that the relevant standards are compatible with various charging and discharging processes and application scenarios.
The prospect of car-network interaction is closely related to the number of electric vehicles. According to data from the Ministry of Public Security, as of the end of 2020, the number of new energy vehicles in China was 4.92 million, accounting for 1.75% of the total number of vehicles, an increase of 1.11 million vehicles from 2019, an increase of 29.18%.
The industry is generally optimistic about the growth of the number of electric vehicles in China. The Roland Berger report predicts that the penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles in China will reach 40% and 20% respectively by 2030. In 2025, China’s total sales of new energy vehicles are expected to reach 5.66 million. In the next ten years, the total scale of China’s new energy vehicle charging market will increase by 6.6 times.
The prospects of car-network interaction
As the scale of electric vehicles expands, the connection between transportation and the grid is getting closer and closer. The book “Top-level Design and Strategic Collaboration for the Automobile Revolution” edited by the China Electric Vehicles Association stated that the proportion of electricity consumption of pure electric vehicles in the total electricity consumption of society will increase from less than 1% at present to 5 in 2035. %. At that time, large-scale disorderly charging of electric vehicles will have a greater impact on the power system. DecisionThe policy agency should make a top-level design for the coordinated development of electric vehicles and power systems in advance.
The proportion of electric vehicle electricity consumption in the entire society’s electricity consumption, source: “Top-level Design and Strategic Collaboration Facing the Automotive Revolution”
From the perspective of the power grid, promoting electric vehicles to become the power bank of the power grid,can save huge peak shaving costs. State Grid Electric Vehicle CompanyAccording to the information provided by the company, by 2040, through V2G technology, 300 million electric vehicles in the country will have about 12 billion kilowatt-hours of energy storage resources, which can provide 400GW of adjustment capacity for the grid, which is the most economical way to improve the balance of the grid. Reasonable use of this idle resource is equivalent to the construction of 100 of the world’s largest pumped storage power stations, which can save hundreds of billions of investment in the power grid.
Peng Xiaofeng said that the business model is the key to the large-scale development of V2G. At present, V2G has a single source of profit, mainly through the peak-to-valley price difference and participation in peak shaving. It is hoped that the upstream and downstream of the industry can jointly promote the technical deepening of V2G and promote the introduction of related policy mechanisms.
In Guangzhou, where the reform of the electricity market is fast, the market access for grid auxiliary services is gradually being relaxed, providing more space for the development of vehicle-network interaction. According to Su Zhipeng’s calculations, if electric vehicles are used as a backup power source for grid frequency modulation and are equipped with renewable energy during the charging process, the electric vehicles can provide load-side second-level adjustment capabilities when the renewable energy needs to be adjusted upwards. In this case, the cost of renewable energy can be reduced to about 10 yuan per kilowatt per year, which is much lower than the cost of 80-160 yuan for load reduction operation of peak shaving units, and also lower than the cost of 20-30 yuan for energy storage.
If policy restrictions are released, participation of electric vehicles in power demand side response will also be a business opportunity for integrated energy service companies. Electricity demand-side response refers to the use of market incentive mechanisms to guide users to adjust production time, optimize resource allocation, and alleviate the contradiction between power supply and demand.
GCL Integrated Energy Service Co., Ltd. is one of the most important power load integrators in Jiangsu Province. Niu Shubin, the chairman of the company, told a reporter from Caijing that the participation of electric vehicles in demand-side response will be the company’s future development focus.
At present, the scale of development of car-network interaction in various countries is very limited, one is because the number of electric vehicles is still small, and the other is because the business model is still being explored. However, in developed countries in Europe and the United States where the electricity market is mature, vehicle-network interaction has entered the market transaction link on the transmission side. Next-Kraftwerke, Germany’s largest virtual power plant operator, manages thousands of distributed power generation equipment and energy storage equipment, and electric vehicles are also in its virtual power plant platform.
Zold Environmental Research (Beijing) Center Director Zhang Shuwei told the reporter of Caijing that the core of car-network interaction is to see whether the electricity price difference is Large enough, the greater the price difference, the more motivate car owners to charge and discharge.
The level of peak-to-valley electricity prices varies across China, and the current peak-to-valley price difference is mostly around 1 yuan/kWh. InsidersAccording to calculations, the peak-to-valley electricity price difference must exceed 1.5 yuan/kWh to mobilize the enthusiasm of electric vehicle owners to participate in V2G. When the price difference exceeds 1.5 yuan/kWh, car owners trade 30 kilowatt-hours of electricity every day, and half of the price of electric vehicles can be recovered in 5 to 10 years.
This article is from WeChat official account:Eleven people in finance and economics (ID: caijingEleven) , author: Xupei Yu