Danish Program Targets Vehicle-to-Grid Standards

Mitsubishi, Nissan and PSA Group are part of a collaborative effort in Denmark to develop global standards for electrified vehicles when they connect directly to an electrical grid.

The so-called Parker initiative aims to specify technical parameters needed to provide power and energy services between EVs and the grid, and to create a certificate for vehicles that meet the guidelines. It builds on Denmark’s earlier Edison and Nikola projects and current Frederiksberg Pilot, which is testing 10 Nissan eNV200 cars and Enel V2G charger stations.

Other participants include Danish energy companies Enel and Frederiksberg Forsyning, Insero equipment, Nuvve and the Technical University of Denmark. California-based Nuvve provides the platform—developed by the University of Delaware—that controls the power flow to and from the cars.

The group plans to identify and address potential technical, market, economic and regulatory barriers for users, vehicles and supporting infrastructure. They will share study findings and hope to implement the results across geographies, technologies and user groups.

EVs could be used to quickly stabilize an electric grid to better match consumption and avoid power outages, the partners note. In addition to using surplus energy to charge their batteries, future EVs can reduce a power shortfall by optimizing charging times or returning power to the grid.

The $2.1 million program, which will run through July 2018, is funded by Denmark’s ForskEL research and development organization. It will be headed by Peter Bach Andersen, an electrical engineering professor at the Technical University of Denmark and researcher at the country’s Center for Electric Power and Energy.