Electric vehicles balance the grid in UK for first time

Electric cars are balancing supply and demand on the UK power grid for the first time in a trial hosted by National Grid ESO and Octopus Energy.

Through participation in an industry-wide trial, via the Power Responsive programme, the smart tariff ‘Intelligent Octopus’ will use batteries in electric vehicles (EVs) to balance the grid while charging.

This trial will explore the role that smaller-scale assets, in particular EVs, could have in providing flexibility to the energy system via the Balancing Mechanism – a continuous market in which power is traded to balance the grid in real time.

The technology automatically adjusts the charging schedule of the car in response to the ESO requests for more or less power.

Kraken, Octopus’s tech platform, will connect to Octopus customer EVs and continually manage their response depending on changing grid needs. Updates to charging schedules will ensure that customer charging targets will still be met.

Alex Schoch, head of flexibility at Octopus Energy Group, said: “EV drivers on our ‘Intelligent Octopus’ tariff now form the UK’s biggest virtual battery – and for the first time ever EVs have entered the Balancing Mechanism.

“Whilst we sleep, EV drivers are driving down grid balancing costs that are passed on to all customers – saving us all money. This is the ‘smart energy grid’ today – complete radicalisation of the way the system is balanced is here now.”

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Added Claire Dykta, National Grid ESO head of markets, said: “Opening up access to the Balancing Mechanism for electric vehicles and other technologies is an important step for extending consumer flexibility in a net-zero world.

“This industry-wide trial will provide valuable information to our control room, to help enable the full time availability of electric vehicles in the Balancing Mechanism in future.”

Running through the Power Responsive programme, the ESO’s live trial builds on previous work to incorporate the operation of EVs into the Balancing Mechanism.

The trial relaxes the operational metering standards for smaller-scale aggregated assets, to facilitate their participation in the Balancing Mechanism.

Each participating provider can run a total of 10MW as part of the live trial over a three-month window, with a total volume cap of 50MW.