IMHO, the energy system has 2 goals:
• Efficiency – minimizing total economic & ecological costs
• Equity – human wellbeing, individually and collectively
The (Nobel prize earning) Tinbergen rule stipulates that each of these goals requires its own policy instrument. Relying on 1 market price – to efficiently manage EV charging without inequitable punishing parents for cooking at 6pm – flies in the face of this.
So, what can be done? Late last year I had the privilege to speak my mind about this problem and potential solutions (spoiler: separating energy demand into an essential and a flexible component – which could just be EVs to start with) as part of a Victorian Council of Social Service event and in a presentation to the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) economic research team.
The first preso was recorded https://lnkd.in/gSumdPak and slides and context is provided https://lnkd.in/g5zPbU-Z
Author Archives → bjorns
Discussion with the ACT Chief Minister
I had the pleasure of discussing all things energy transition with the ACT Chief Minister late last year in my role as ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year.
His description below… https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewbarrmla_dr-bjorn-sturmberg-has-been-awarded-the-2024-activity-7274676995525894145-duD4
“Dr Bjorn Sturmberg has been awarded the 2024 ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year Award for his work on clean energy technology.
The Award recognises the achievements of an emerging scientist and celebrates excellence in scientific research and innovation here in the ACT.
Continue readingPublication of electric bus & depot model
RouteZero, our tool for simulating the energy consumption of electricbuses on any given bus route and the grid impacts of charging them at a bus depot has been published in a Nature Portfolio special issue https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00008-2.epdf
The tool is now also availble opensource in its entirity https://github.com/bsgip/RouteZero/
While the easy to use web version remains freely available https://routezero.cecs.anu.edu.au/ has been extended to include Autearoa.
If you’d like to have further routes added to the web version please send me a message. All we need is the gtfs files (which are ubiquotously available).
Hats off once more to Johannes Hendriks for doing the heavy lifting in creating this fantastic tool!
Flat fees for flexible EVs
This study builds upon the recently published Unplugged is inflexible report to explore one avenue by which EV drivers could be incentivised to:
- plug their EVs in for extended durations, and
- permit their vehicles to be charged flexibly.
While there are many avenues by which this could be done, we here explore the potential for EV drivers to be offered very simple, flat retail offers based solely on how often they plug in their EVs and how much energy their EV consumes. This approach entirely removes considerations of when in the day vehicles are plugged in, which lightens the mental burden on drivers and may contribute to greater acceptance of managed charging.
This concept is motivated by the belief that creating price-certainty, and ideally cost-certainty, is a core way in which electricity retailers create value for their customers. This EV charging arrangement engages customers (EV drivers) is a quid pro quo where retailers contribute their expertise and diversity of customers to manage pricing risk, and EV drivers contribute the flexibility of their charging demand.
Our modelling shows that doubling the amount of time EVs are plugged in for reduces the cost of charging by half. To be clear, this requires nothing of EV drivers other than having their EV connected to a charger for longer periods, which enables more flexibly charging behaviour.
To quantify the risk for retailers we conduct a statistical analysis in terms of the cost of EV charging per day or per kWh. This suggests that offering a fixed price per day may go beyond retailers’ risk appetite, making a fixed price per kWh the more attractive option. This is likely also fairer for customers as it charges for the precise amount of energy used.
The addition of vehicle-to-grid increases the benefits of longer plug-in times by facilitating market arbitrage. Vehicles that are driven less than 40km per day and are plugged in to chargers for more than 8 hours a day (with vehicle-to-grid) can, on average, be charged at zero or negative cost.
While outside of the scope of this study, we note that this same tariff concept (and simulation model) could be applied matching flexible EV charging with the generation of a collection of wind or solar farms. This would provide another way for a retailer to manage/fix their price exposure while simultaneously creating value for customers by charging vehicles with zero emissions power.
Full report below
Continue reading2024 ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year
I’m very honoured to be named as the ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year today. I thought I’d share the 60 second video I made for the application.
Unplugged is inflexible – How drivers’ plug in behaviour determines the flexibility of electric vehicle (dis)charging
In a neat little project for the ACT Government I analyse the (IMO oft overlooked) critical step of when EV drivers plug in their vehicles. If they’re not plugged in for substantially longer than required for charging then EVs are not the fabulously flexible load that they could be.
Watt equity? Australians deserve a Basic Energy Right
This essay was first published in Australian Quarterly 95.3, Australia’s Longest running public affairs magazine, published by Australian Institute for Policy and Science https://aips.net.au/aq-magazine/current-edition/
Within the energy industry there is a popular, feel-good refrain that the energy transition will deliver a system that is ‘democratised’, in addition to being ‘decarbonised’, ‘digitised’, and ‘decentralised’. Here democratised is used as an umbrella term for a broad suite of desirable values: fair, just, equitable. Yet the way in which democratisation is envisioned to occur is, in contrast, blinkered – households are seen to gain political power as a consequence of their generating and controlling electrical power from rooftop solar, batteries, and electric vehicles – but what about those without?
This prevailing narrative of democratisation overlooks, amongst other things, the connection between privilege and ownership of these technologies, and the structural realities of social, as well as techno-economic, power. In particular, it ignores the systemic effects of managing energy through markets and, consequently, ignoring energy’s role as an essential service underpinning modern life.
The starting point of this essay is that the energy transition is not on track to improve equity. This is because equity will only be improved if it is prioritised above competing values, such as profit, in the millions of design choices that constitute the transition.
Such prioritisation is impossible within the existing (artificially) constrained policy landscape, in which the only options are those within the framework of indistinguishable individuals interacting through a market. This eliminates any space for unequal redistribution in recognition of the differing circumstances within the collective, and thereby contributions towards equity.
Progress towards equity rests on expanding the policy imagination. This essay offers one such suggestion: the establishment of a Basic Energy Right that provides all households with a modest amount of energy free of charge to meet their essential needs.
Continue readingBean nuclei
There once was a bean farmer called P. For years, he’d supplied his local shops and cafes with tasty black beans. But then along came a new farmer whose green beans were much cheaper, and what’s more didn’t make people fart.
Everyone in town was excited to switch to these new cheap fart-free green beans. Farmer P was facing ruin.
So P decided to remind everyone that there was also a third type of bean that they should consider. This is an exotic purple bean that no local had ever tried.
Now P knew that these pink beans were expensive, hard to grow, and were suspected of making people’s hair fall out. No customers was going to choose the pink beans over the cheap, clean green beans.
But by making his customers spend time researching these pink beans P hoped to sell them another season or two of his old familiar black beans.
—
Inspired by question from students at Cringila Public School as part of a DeadlyScience session | Image from deepai.org
Ignore variability, overestimate hydrogen production – Quantifying the effects of electrolyzer efficiency curves on hydrogen production from renewable energy sources
In this new paper with Dan Virah-Sawmy and Fiona J Beck we show that neglecting the variable electrolyzer efficiency, as is commonly done in studies of green hydrogen, leads to significant overestimation of hydrogen production in the range of 5–24%
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319924020676
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of including (or neglecting) the variable efficiency of hydrogen electrolyzers as a function of operating power in the modelling of green hydrogen produced from variable renewable energy sources. Results show that neglecting the variable electrolyzer efficiency, as is commonly done in studies of green hydrogen, leads to significant overestimation of hydrogen production in the range of 5–24%. The effects of the time resolution used in models are also investigated, as well as the impact of including the option for the electrolyzer to switch to stand-by mode instead of powering down and electrolyzer ramp rate constraints. Results indicate that these have a minor effect on overall hydrogen production, with the use of hour resolution data leading to overestimation in the range of 0.2–2%, relative to using 5-min data. This study used data from three solar farms and three wind in Australia, from which it is observed that wind farms produced 55% more hydrogen than the solar farms. The results in this study highlight the critical importance of including the variable efficiency of electrolyzers in the modelling of green hydrogen production. As this industry scales, continuing to neglect this effect would lead to the overestimation of hydrogen production by tens of megatonnes.
SwitchedOn podcast on Energy Equity
Delighted to be on RenewEconomy & Boundless Earth SwitchedOn podcast kicking off a discussion of how to *truly* improve energy equity https://reneweconomy.com.au/switchedon-podcast-free-electricity-to-cover-essential-needs/
“A popular refrain of the renewable energy transition is it will deliver an energy system that is more democratic, as well as decarbonised. That the political power of generating energy will shift from big power companies to households, as a result of us being able to generate and control electrical power from our rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles, etc.
But this decentralised, democratic narrative isn’t a foregone conclusion…”