The enormous potential for electric cars to contribute to the UK’s energy security means that any pressure to push back the 2030 deadline to end the sale of new, purely combustion-engined cars must be resisted.
That’s the belief of Claire Miller, director of technology and innovation at Octopus Electric Vehicles, who oversaw her firm’s Powerloop vehicle-to-grid (V2G) trials, in which Nissan Leaf owners were able to use their cars’ batteries to store cheap, abundant energy overnight and then power their homes or return it to the grid during daytime.
The final stage of that trial, working with National Grid, is now complete, and four years of data is being analysed.
Although the technology is still being developed for mass adoption, energy analysts predict that the potential is there for V2G to provide 20GW of energy storage, the equivalent of 31 million solar panels.
