University of Waterloo researchers are tapping into idled electric vehicles to act as mobile generators and help power overworked and aging electricity grids.
After analyzing energy demand on Alberta’s power grid during rush hour, the research proposes an revolutionary approach to replenish electrical grids with power generated from fuel cells in trucks.
“Canada’s power grids should be upgraded,” said Dr. XiaoYu Wu, lead researcher and a professor in Waterloo’s Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering.
“But the value of Alberta’s power grid is way higher than other provinces. Most power is supplied by fossil fuels which leads to high carbon emissions. The necessity to rapidly adjust generators to satisfy fluctuating demand is one among the explanations that the grid price is unstable and volatile. This creates the potential for clean energy storage to flatten the demand and price of electricity.”
The team’s research builds on vehicle-to-grid technology which employs special chargers to push unused energy from electric vehicle (EV) batteries back to the ability grid for storage. This electricity in-storage can support the grid during weather-related outages or to scale back the demand during peak periods.
The research proposes paying drivers of fuel cell powered trucks to rest during rush hour and while resting, to plug right into a hydrogen refueling station or pipeline and use their trucks’ idle fuel cells as generators to supply electricity to the grid. The result’s less vehicle traffic on highways, reduced energy use at peak times and cleaner approach to store energy.
Waterloo graduate student Daniel Ding developed a mathematical model to simulate the operation, then used software to research and model the feasibility and potential of hydrogen fuel cell-powered electric vehicles to balance the grid load and reduce the height price and carbon intensity.
“Hydrogen fuel cells offer benefits over other fuels like batteries which require more investment and pollute more once you get rid of them,” Ding said. “Our preliminary findings show that using existing fuel cells in electric vehicles of the longer term can decrease costs on the grid.”
This energy storage solution has application beyond trucks. Heavy-duty vehicles and trains — like switcher locomotives that typically are idled until they’re needed to alter train routes — may be early adopters.
“With the increasing demand to decarbonize heavy duty vehicles, the fuel cell electric vehicle fleet is anticipated to expand rapidly,” said Wu.
“Connecting these trucks to the grid for the peak-shifting purpose may provide economic incentives for adopting hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles and help facilitate the emergence of a large-scale hydrogen economy.”
The researchers’ next steps plan to check these preliminary findings within the lab and the sphere to find out its real-world applicability.
The research is supported by the Transition Accelerator, Mitacs and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). It’s the most recent in Waterloo’s Sustainable Futures Initiative which goals to make the University a world leader in sustainability research, education and innovation to learn the environment, economy and society.
More details about this work may be present in the research paper, “Optimization of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle-to-Grid in Alberta by Mixed Integer Linear Programming,” published in 2023 IEEE eleventh International Conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering (SEGE).
