Wind energy and electric vehicles

Transport electrification might be an important step for renewable energies in electricity production in order to consolidate and overturn barriers such as no manageability and non-guaranteed supply. Wind energy shows by far the highest short-term and long-term potential, although photovoltaic energy might also provide electricity in isolated or non-network-plugged-in localizations through single pergola (patented models already exist) or garages with photovoltaic covers. As for thermoelectric sun energy, it will play an important role in certain areas, such as in southern Spain and the South-East of the US or Israel, where the transport electrification project depends on the installation of 4,000 MW thermosolar energy in the Néguev desert.



Transport electrification in the next two decades might have the same driving strength for wind energy and other renewable energy sources as the internal combustion engine had in the early 20th Century for the petroleum industry after losing its major market: kerosene, which was replaced by Edison’s light bulb, and light electrification.

Batteries may be recharged when there is spare wind energy electricity available. In the near future, stored electricity might be delivered into the network during peak hours. Batteries could serve as a distributed storing system, similar to pumping reversible stations but in a larger scale and involving thousands or millions of vehicles which are parked most of the time. The bidirectional network and electric vehicles integration creates the conditions to integrate electricity production and transport, opening up new horizons for wind energy and other renewable energies, which might help overturn many of the current limitations.

Nowadays electricity production from wind energy cannot be controlled by producing companies or companies managing the network. The same happens with other renewable energies. On the contrary, chemical energy sources such as coal, petroleum and mainly natural gas are much more flexible to adapt themselves to the network demand curve, enabling modulation according to demand. The current impossibility to manage wind energy and other renewable energies is used to discredit its development and to limit it to an arbitrary 10 or 20 per cent of the electric demand, since overturning this limit would cause network managing difficulties to be insurmountable.

Electricity consumption after the progressive reconversion of the car fleet in Spain would not cause unsolvable issues; it could even contribute to an improvement of the network management (V2G networks). A vehicle consuming 14 kWh per 100 km (consumption ranges between 10 and 20 kWh per 100 km) and covering 15,000 km per year (an acceptable average) would consume 2,100 kWh per year. The car fleet according to latest DGT (Spanish Traffic Authority) data amounts to 30.3 million, 21.8 million of which are passenger cars. Its annual consumption would reach 80,000 GWh. In theory, this electricity supply could be obtained by means of a 37,000 MW contribution from wind energy. By 2020 wind energy will provide 40,000 MW and offshore wind energy will provide 5,000 MW. After 2020 power will keep increasing and both thermoelectric sun energy and photovoltaic energy will keep progressing, probably reaching about 20,000 MW each by 2020.

Wind energy on its own could, in principle, provide all electricity needed for the vehicle fleet electrification in Spain, although a balanced and variable mix would be reasonable. This should be determined when the transport electrification begins.

This is possible and it is also an obligation. Synergy between wind energy and electric vehicles exists, above all in network management. In the near future, it will be possible to see reversible electric networks (V2G, from network to vehicle during off-peak hours, and from vehicle to network during peak hours), in which vehicle lithium batteries will be able to store electricity produced at night and during low demand hours in order to sell it to the network at a good price during peak hours.