On the morning of April 3, Taiwan was hit by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. Seconds later, hundreds of battery-swapping stations across Taiwan noticed something else: The power grid’s power frequency suffered a sudden drop, a sign that some plants had been disconnected during the disaster. The grid was now struggling to meet energy demand.
These stations, built by Taiwanese company Gogoro for electrically powered two-wheeled vehicles such as scooters, mopeds and bicycles, responded immediately. According to figures provided by the company, 590 Gogoro battery swap locations (some with more than one swap station) have stopped consuming electricity from the grid, reducing local demand by a total of six megawatts, enough to power thousands of residences. It took 12 minutes for the grid to recover, and the battery swapping stations resumed normal operation.
Gogoro isn’t the only company working on swapping batteries for electric scooters (New York City recently launched a pilot program to give delivery drivers the option to charge this way), but it’s certainly one of the most successful. successful. Founded in 2011, the company has a network of more than 12 thousand stations in Taiwan and has more than 600 thousand monthly subscribers who pay to change batteries when necessary. Each station is about the size of two vending machines and can store around 30 scooter batteries.
Now the company is putting the battery network to another use: Gogoro has been working with Enel X, an Italian company, to incorporate the stations into a virtual power plant (VPP) system that helps Taiwan’s grid remain more resilient. in emergencies like the April earthquake.
Battery swap stations work well for VPP programs because they offer much more flexibility than at-home charging, where an e-bike owner often only has one or two batteries and therefore needs to charge immediately after one runs out. With dozens of batteries in a single station as a demand buffer, Gogoro can choose when to charge them – for example, at night, when there is less power demand and it is cheaper. Meanwhile, batteries can return energy to the grid when it is stressed – hence the comparison with power plants.
“What’s beautiful is that the economic interest of the stations is aligned with the grid – battery swap companies have the incentive to schedule their loads during the period of low usage, paying the low price for electricity, while returning the electricity to the network during the peak period, enjoying a higher price,” says S. Alex Yang, professor of administrative sciences at London Business School.
Gogoro is in a unique position to become a vital part of the VPP network because “there is a constant load of energy and at the same time we are in standby mode and can stop receiving or return [energy] to the grid to provide stability ”.
Luke calculates that only 90% of Gogoro’s batteries are actually on the road powering the scooters at any given time, so the remainder, which sits on shelves waiting for customers to pick them up, becomes a valuable resource that can be utilized over the network.
Today, of Gogoro’s 2,500 locations, more than 1,000 are part of the VPP program. Gogoro promises that the system will automatically detect emergencies and, in response, immediately reduce your consumption by a certain total amount.
The stations that are included in the VPP depend on where they are and how much capacity they have. A smaller station located outside of a metro station – which means high demand and low supply – probably can’t afford to stop charging during an emergency, as passengers may soon come looking for a battery. However, a megastation with 120 batteries in a residential area is probably safe to stop charging the batteries for a while.
Additionally, the entire station doesn’t go dark – Gogoro has a built-in system that decides which or how many batteries in a station stop charging. “We know exactly which batteries to turn off, which station to turn off, and how much to turn off,” says Luke. “All of this was calculated in real time on the back of the server.” It can even consolidate the power remaining in multiple batteries into one, so an incoming customer can still leave with a fully charged battery even if the entire system is operating below capacity.
The earthquake and its aftermath in Taiwan this year put VPP stations to the test, but also showed the strength of the system. On April 15, 12 days after the initial earthquake, the grid in Taiwan was still recovering from the damage when another power outage occurred. This time, 818 Gogoro locations responded within five seconds, reducing energy consumption by 11 megawatts for 30 minutes.
Numbers like 6 megawatts and 11 megawatts “are not a trivial amount of power, but they are still substantially smaller than a centralized power plant,” says Joshua Pearce, an engineering professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada. For comparison, Taiwan lost 3,200 MW of power supply shortly after the April earthquake, and the gap was mostly filled by solar power, centralized battery storage, and hydropower. However, the entire Taiwanese VPP network combined, which has reached a capacity of 1,350 MW, can make a significant difference. “It helps the network maintain stability during disasters. The more smart loads there are in the network, the more resilient it will be,” he says.
However, the potential of these battery swapping stations has not yet been fully realized; most stations have not yet started feeding power back into the grid.
“The technology system is ready, but the business and economy are not ready,” says Luke. There are 10 Gogoro battery swapping stations that can return electricity to the grid in a pilot program, but other stations have not received the technology upgrade.
Upgrading stations to bidirectional charging only makes economic sense if Gogoro can make a profit by selling the electricity back. While Taiwan’s state-owned utility currently allows private power generators such as solar farms to sell electricity to the grid at a higher price, it has not allowed battery storage companies such as Gogoro to do the same.
This challenge is not unique to Taiwan. Incorporating technologies like VPP requires fundamental changes to the network, which will not occur without policy support. “The technology exists, but the practices are being impeded by antiquated utility business models where they provide all electrical services,” says Pearce. “Fair policies are needed to allow solar and battery owners to participate in the electricity market in the best interests of all electricity consumers.”
Correction: The story has been updated to clarify that 90%, not 10%, of Gogoro’s batteries are on the road.
( fonte: MIT Technology Review )
