Renewable Ways Of Charging EVs

Varun Goenka May 30, 2022

Electric vehicles (EVs) are seen as the global solution to greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by conventional fossil fuel vehicles. They are expected to reduce these emissions and eventually contribute towards achieving net-zero emissions in a few decades from now. The need for such clean mobility is understandable considering the fact that India is home to 6 of the world’s top 10 most polluted cities.

In recent times, the central as well as the state governments have launched several programmes and initiatives to boost EV adoption. Several corporate houses have also shown willingness to switch to EV fleets for their logistics needs. However, to convert the millions of vehicles on Indian roads into EVs, the country would need several terawatt-hours of electricity additionally. With the majority of the existing energy generation coming from coal-fired power stations, this indirectly leads to losing out on the environmental benefits of clean road transportation. Hence, there is a need for renewable sources of energy to charge EVs.

Clean Electric Mobility

To achieve the goal of clean electric mobility, it is essential that EV charging or battery swapping stations are integrated with renewable energy sources. Further, it is also imperative to improve the load management scenarios at the Distribution Transformer (DT) level for the power companies to reduce loss of energy and get better visibility of the load at different hours.

Instead of anytime, anywhere practice for charging EVs, there is a need to build infrastructure that makes energy support available to EVs at all times, but in a smarter and cleaner way. Battery swapping services are one of the key solutions here. In a typical scenario, a battery swapping station is equipped with enough fully charged batteries to swap the drained ones. These batteries can then be stored and charged in a more flexible and optimized manner.

Contrary to that, the public charging stations enable EVs to charge anytime. Assuming a normal scenario, most EV owners would tend to plug their vehicles for charging overnight when they don’t have to travel. This can significantly increase the peak demand on the grid. Alternatively, if the EVs are left to charge uncontrolled then there could be scenarios where peak demand is witnessed several times a day and it becomes difficult to regulate the same.

One of the benefits of India is that it is a sunny country with most regions receiving ample sunlight throughout the day. Thus, integrating EV charging and battery swapping stations can not only prove to be financially viable but also reduce the demand for fossil fuel energy. Also, during the off-peak hours, the renewable energy generated at the stations can be stored in batteries and ploughed back into the grid. This would help in reducing the overall emissions caused by power generation.

Policy Initiatives To Address The Challenge

The right policies can significantly enhance the outcome of the efforts. The Delhi Electric Vehicles Policy, 2020, encourages private as well as public EV charging station operators to integrate renewable power sources and practices such as power banking and battery swapping. Further, the draft Battery Swapping Policy that the Government of India has announced aims to streamline, facilitate as well as optimise the battery swapping operations in the country. Energy efficiency is one of the key elements of the policy, and it is expected that the Battery Swapping Services providers integrating renewable sources of energy will be supported through this policy’s framework.

Battery swapping services providers can adopt a two-way charging process. As mentioned earlier, the additional batteries stored can be used to power other use cases and reduce the demand from the conventional grid. Service providers can also enter into agreements with companies that generate renewable energy from a diversity of sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, and biomass.

Using renewable energy sources to power EV fleets of the future can help businesses as well as cities to cut down their carbon footprint. This will further enhance the chances of keeping global warming under manageable levels.