Future Electric Vehicle Energy networks supporting Renewables (FEVER)

Project Outline

This programme grant seeks to address the clean growth and future mobility Grand Challenges of the UK’s Industrial Strategy via a novel solution to deliver a national electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure powered by renewable energy electricity generation. This directly addresses the existing national grid constraints inhibiting continued expansion of renewable energy generation, mitigates the forecast grid capacity limits for the provision of a future national EV charging system for the UK’s >30 million cars and creates a basis for a network of more local smart grids.

The research vision for FEVER is to investigate the use of local renewable energy generation coupled with off-vehicle energy storage (OVES) systems to supply EV charging stations, creating a nucleus of a local electrical smart grid.

The three objectives of this ambitious research programme are to:

·       Design a renewable energy supplied EV charging station complete with a local OVES system, thereby expanding EV recharging infrastructure whilst minimising grid capacity demands;

·       Create new 100% renewable based local smart grids around an EV charging hub, that could further develop and utilise vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and other grid aggregation concepts;

·       Address how a local community based generation and usage model may support zero