By 2025, Taiwan will have 164,000 registered electric vehicles, with the goal of achieving universal adoption by 2050. With the integration of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology, electric vehicles will not only become energy storage devices, like mobile power banks, but will even assist in power dispatch, contributing to power stability. Industry experts estimate that by 2050, Taiwan's electric vehicle fleet will hold 560 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, equivalent to Taiwan's daily electricity needs, with over 70% of this capacity contained in electric vehicles.
Taiwan International Smart Energy Week (Energy Taiwan) held the "Green Energy Technology Launches Net Zero Era Competitiveness Forum" on the 19th, exploring how Taiwan can enhance its energy transition competitiveness from the two main themes of "New Business Opportunities in Energy Storage Applications" and "New Markets for Green Power Trading."
Electric vehicles hold a significant amount of electricity, potentially accounting for 70% of China's daily electricity consumption by 2050.
By 2025, there will be 164,000 registered electric vehicles in Taiwan, with this number projected to grow to 700,000 in 2030 and 2.8 million in 2040, respectively. The goal of widespread electric vehicle adoption is projected to be achieved by 2050. The recent advancement of "Vehicle-to-Grid" (V2G) technology has enabled electric vehicles to transmit power from their onboard batteries back to the grid, transforming them into energy storage facilities and "mobile power banks."
Lin Junying, deputy general manager of eTreego, an electric vehicle charging station company, pointed out that the battery packs in electric vehicles currently typically have a capacity of over 70 kWh, meaning each vehicle carries 60 to 100 kWh of electricity. Lin Junying analyzed that, assuming an electric vehicle battery has a maximum capacity of 70 kWh, electric vehicles will consume 42 million, 168 million, and 560 million kWh of electricity in 2030, 2040, and 2050, respectively.
Lin Junying said that Taiwan's daily electricity consumption is about 750 million kWh, which means that after 2050, more than 70% of Taiwan's daily electricity needs will be in electric vehicles. Although not every electric vehicle participates in power assistance or scheduling, as long as 10% of them participate, it will be a "very scary number."
Britain and France are using V2G technology to transform roads into mobile power sources and virtual power plants.
The development of the electric vehicle industry has spurred a surge in V2G technology adoption, with an increasing number of countries investing in related initiatives. Lin Junying shared that France, starting in 2017, installed over 100 11kW V2G charging stations in commercial spaces and public parking lots. By 2021, they had successfully aggregated a 1MW capacity, effectively creating a miniature virtual power plant, joining the primary reserve capacity market. This benefit, she explained, is generating €20 in monthly revenue for each vehicle using a V2G charger, significantly boosting market acceptance of electric vehicles.
Beyond general operational applications, there are also examples of V2G applications being introduced at the residential level. Lin Junying cites the UK government's subsidy for the installation of 320 V2G bidirectional charging stations, which began in 2018 and are available to anyone who owns or leases a Nissan LEAF. These stations are equipped with an energy management system that automatically charges electric vehicles during the cheapest electricity hours and sells excess electricity back to the grid. This not only saves owners over £800 annually but also transforms every household into a small green power plant.
In Taiwan, Taipower has set up two V2G electric vehicle smart charging demonstration sites in Kinmen and Taipei since 2020. Electric vehicles with discharge functions can transmit electricity back to the power grid; last year (2021), it once again teamed up with the electric motorcycle leader Gogoro to set up the first electric motorcycle V2G battery swap station in China and abroad, hoping to build it into an energy storage station that can provide distributed power supply. Each station stores 60 degrees of electricity, which is equivalent to about 4 to 5 days of electricity consumption for an average household.
Combined with demand response, it is a major contributor to grid stability, but challenges remain.
To ensure the safety and stability of the power grid, Taipower Company officially opened the "Power Trading Center" in 2021, allowing private distributed power resources to participate in bidding on the platform and assist Taipower in power dispatching.
In addition to becoming small energy storage stations, future V2G battery swap stations will also have the opportunity to join the power trading platform to participate in "demand response," providing real-time grid backup services to help alleviate Taipower's power supply pressure during peak hours.
However, the trading platform stipulates that operators must provide dispatchable power capacity greater than 1MW to participate in the market. Distributed energy below 1MW must rely on "user group representatives" (Aggregators, also known as aggregators) similar to group buyers to aggregate smaller-scale energy of the same type.
Lin Junying said the biggest challenge currently is that many aggregators "don't want to spend too much effort integrating such a small amount of energy from electric vehicles."
Source: Environmental Information Center (https://e-info.org.tw/node/235266)
