Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com
Shen Fei, Vice President of Power Management of NIO, was recently at the China EV100 Forum 2022 where he shared his thoughts on the power grid system, battery swap stations and its advantages and disadvantages. This was the 7th time that NIO participated in the China EV100 Forum, an annual event attracts great interest from companies and organizations that are currently active in China.
“Electric vehicles and charging and exchanging infrastructure need to be developed in concert with new power systems. This is a two-way relationship. When users are charging, the power grid needs to face continuous power supply and grid safety. At the same time, it is necessary to ensure the economic operation of the system, and at the same time, it is necessary to play a good role in on-board energy storage.”
“In fact, an electric vehicle is an energy carrier with the characteristics of time and space translation. Compared with wind and solar power generation, it needs to be limited by wind, and light is limited by day and night. Different, electric vehicles are more flexible, so they need to play a good role in mobile energy storage.”
Shen Fei also mentioned that a single use of valley and peak prices to guide users to charge “may be counterproductive in the future, so we should think about more flexible and scientific guidance methods”.
According to the peak energy replenishment valley in Figure 1 (image above), it can be seen that in the law of interaction between electric vehicles and the power grid, the yellow line represents the power station, the green line represents the home charger, the orange line represents the overcharge, and the white line represents the average value of the first three.
During the day, the home charger hardly reaches the load state, and it peaks after 22 o’clock in the evening, and it starts to drop after basically maintaining it for three hours.
Battery Swap stations are more regular, keeping up with the user’s work and rest, but there are two peaks, 9-10 o’clock in the morning and 23-24 o’clock in the evening; there are also two peaks at overcharge stations, mainly between 11-17 o’clock, and between 22 o’clock and 2 o’clock in the morning at night, mainly because there are more drivers such as Didi.
Give good play to the three angles of regional power grids, distribution network stations, and mobile power supplies, so that there is flexible deployment space. At present, more than 90% of the scenes of private cars are static. As long as the user’s charging needs are guided, there will be more room for expansion, rather than simply regulating the charging price.
Among them, the regional power grid is based on provincial and municipal units. The Battery Swap stations can be used as a virtual two-way load or power supply, which can not only meet the needs of users for power exchange, but also participate in the adjustment of the power grid and pass it back to the power grid, so it actually plays a role in peak adjustment and frequency modulation.
Orderly charging and discharging under the distribution network station area, optical storage and charging are integrated to enhance the on-site consumption and absorption capacity of new energy sources.
Mobile power is actually better understood as a mobile power bank, and electric vehicles are actually a kind of energy storage carrier.
“The above three abilities are actually expanded to have more application scenarios”
“For example, in the application of V2X, if a bicycle reaches a discharge capacity of 60kW, juxtaposing multiple vehicles can drive the application of more equipment.
Private piles only have a load rate of about 4.0%, which means that there is still more than 10 times the load space in the community that can be used. For example, B2C piles can be run in the old area, which allows multiple electric vehicle owners to discharge to meet the load requirements of the old area. At the same time, it can be used for charging when it is not during peak periods. Earlier, Nio also revealed that it would contract charging piles in the community to do its own operations. It may also have considered the charging and discharging scenarios, and at the same time, it also avoided the problems of fuel truck occupancy and community coordination.
For example, NIO’s Battery Swap station can be recharged as needed. As a large energy storage, the Battery Swap station can be discharged from the power grid at any time and participate in frequency adjustment. At the same time, it will not affect the Battery Swap station and user services.” — Shen Fei stated.
Lihong Qin, NIO’s Co-Founder, Director and President confirmed on Tuesday that NIO ES7 Model will be released at the end of May, 2 months from now. Qin was asked this Tuesday about the possibility to see the new model NIO ES7 as soon as next month and responded: “Released at the end of May”.
The launch of NIO’s new five-seater SUV is now expected to happen within 8 weeks, 5 weeks later than the initial date, mid-April. The model was supposed to made its public debut at 2022 the Beijing Auto Show but Covid-19 cases surge in China may delay the event.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com