ByteSnap Design kick-starts two-year Vehicle-to-Grid Intelligent Control scheme.
Award-winning electronics design consultancy ByteSnap Design and a consortium of partners (Aston University, Nortech Management and Grid Edge) have been awarded a two-year collaborative project VIGIL under a Vehicle-to-Grid competition, funded by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles and the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The VIGIL project is focussed on developing a new communication and control platform for Vehicle-to-Grid/Building systems: an off-vehicle system that controls how, when and the rate at which electric vehicle batteries are charged/discharged with respect to local substation constraints and EV/building energy requirements.
ByteSnap Design will be developing a communications adaptor, leveraging its expertise in EV charge post design. The communications adaptor will ensure the flexibility and interoperability of the VIGIL platform with different manufacturer’s V2G charge-points. ByteSnap will also be creating a V2G mobile application which will be delivered together with an optimised building management system.
In January 2018, OLEV and BEIS announced that 21 projects (eight feasibility studies, five collaborative research and development projects, and eight real-world v2g trial projects) were to receive funding of around £30 milion to develop the business proposition and core technology around V2Gm and demonstrate those with large-scale trials. The projects involve over 50 industrial partners and research organisations from both the Energy and Automotive sectors, marking the largest and most diverse activities on V2G in the world, and trialling more than 2700 vehicles across the UK.
The V2G projects represent a significant step towards the transition to a low-carbon transportation and a smart energy system. Enabling EVs to return energy to the Power Grid when parked and plugged for charging, will increase Grid resilience, allow for better exploitation of renewable sources and lower the cost of ownership for EV owners – leading to new business opportunities and clear advantages for EV users and energy consumers.