The EDISON Project: IBM’s answer to transport electrification

It is perhaps more than pure coincidence then that on the very same day in another city in Europe, IBM was setting out details of what it believes is the answer to transport electrification: analytics – and more precisely the EDISON Project.

"A lot of the systems that exist in the world don’t work that well and this is an opportunity to fix them," Mike Rhodin, senior vice president for IBM’s Software Solutions Group, told clients, business partners and industry experts gathered at the Smarter Industries Symposium in Barcelona. 

Necessity of updating the grid
The grid is one of the areas Rhodin said needs to become "smarter", so that it can supply the demand that electric vehicles (EVs) are bringing. A smart grid is an electricity network that can intelligently integrate the actions of all users connected to it –generators, consumers and those that do both – in order to deliver a sustainable, efficient and secure supply of energy.

"Currently, there really isn’t any intelligent management of energy supply and demand, but this can be enabled by instrumentation," said Rhodin. "And once we have the data, we can start using analytics to understand what is going on. If we can manage the grid system better, we can decrease carbon emissions. So this is an opportunity for big change on a global scale."

IBM is promoting a smart electricity management system that will enable a successful mass uptake of EVs, by smoothing out power demand and generation spikes in a future that includes more wind farms.

"Ultimately, the EV market is going to be very complicated," said Clay Luthy, Global Distributed Energy Resource manager for IBM's Energy and Utilities industry. "EVs represent a potentially big load for utilities. So utilities are going to have to react to that."

And that’s where IBM believes its EDISON Project comes into play.

EDISON Project
IBM is working on a project with a research consortium in Denmark to explore how to turn millions of EVs into a distributed storage system for the nation's ambitious wind energy plans. The project will create a model for letting eco-minded consumers charge their cars with renewable energy while allowing utilities to better absorb and manage wind-generated power.

IBM is working with utility firm DONG Energy is working with regional energy company Oestkraft, the Technical University of Denmark, Siemens, Eurisco and the Danish Energy Association.

To the extent allowed by consumer preferences, electric vehicles using the system will be charged when wind is generating excess power, such as at night. The vehicle charging will be slowed or delayed when the wind stops and energy production is diminished.

The goal is to use this small pilot of only about 15 electric vehicles to develop a model for deploying roughly 200,000 wind-powered EVs nationwide by 2020. The project is only about a year away from completion according to IBM, and has the potential to revolutionise the way utilities manage energy.

"EVs will fundamentally change the way you interact with utilities," said Luthy. "Even in small amounts, EVs pose a challenge, but we’re working to make sure that’s not a problem anymore. The big challenge for utilities is centered around how we introduce EVs to the grid."

Analytics research
Within the project, researchers from IBM Denmark and from IBM Research Zurich have developed specialised analytics software to synchronise the charging of EVs with the availability of wind power in the grid. This includes tasks like governing when and where the EVs can recharge, based on available power and peak demand, and how to bill drivers when they use public recharging stations.

The technology also address complexities such as balancing load on the grid, and even allowing the electrical distribution system to use the EVs as supplementary power storage that can contribute electricity back to the grid as needed.

"Renewable energy is not controllable, which is one of the issues we have to address," said Luthy. "We can use EVs to modulate and send excess energy to EVs. This can help ensure that demand meets supply. Your electric vehicle can be your own battery. A true smart grid is a two-way information flow between the consumer and utilities."

Impact for the UK
The Department for Transport’s 2008 forecast, predicts a demand of half a million EVs by 2020 being plugged in at the same time, but the National Grid said this surge is something the national network operator is capable of handling with help from technology like smart metering.

According to a POST note published last month by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, if EVs were recharged between 10 pm and 6 am up to 20 million could be supported nationally with little extra generating capacity. Currently, however, only a few thousand of the UK’s 28.5 million vehicles are EVs.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said there is still a need to transform the entire electricity system; with major changes to the way power is generated, moved and consumed in order to prepare for the future. More electricity will also need to be produced without emitting greenhouse gases. IBM said the EDISON project is the answer to these concerns.

Plans in both the UK and Europe call for improved renewable energy generation as well as increased numbers of EVs, making the adaption of a smart grid even more important, according to IBM.

In its 2020 energy strategy, last week the EC said investments of €1 trillion (£85 million) would need to be made over the next 10 years to make Europe’s energy more sustainable and secure.

In the UK, the Low Carbon Transition Plan 2009 calls for 40 per cent of electricity in the UK to come from low carbon sources by 2020, since 80 per cent of electricity is currently generated through fossil fuels.

"We’re using data to look at these problems in a different way," said Rhodin. "There is a lot of complexity in this area and we’re trying to make sense of that complexity and manage it so that we can provide solutions."