[ferrarirules]

Yes, you read it right. "Green" electricity is being used to power chargers in India.

As I am a user of Glida chargers, I got a newsletter from team on what they are doing for sustainability. I was amazed to read that they were working on project to procure "GREEN" Energy from the DISCOMS in Hyderabad.

A few key excerpts from the email

They have converted 28 of their chargers in Hyderabad to use green electricity.

Starting in September, we initiated a project to procure "GREEN" Energy from the DISCOMS in Hyderabad, with 28 existing EV connections in Hyderabad already converted to EV connections powered by “GREEN” Energy.

I am pleased to share that with the conversion of 28 connections in Hyderabad, approximately 35% of the energy dispensed by our charging stations in the month of October 2023 was "GREEN"

Based on below statement this is available multiple states

DISCOMs have established an enhanced tariff structure for providing green energy in comparison to the standard EV tariff, which varies from 44 paise/KWh to 230 paise/KWh from state to state.

A few things that I realized after reading this

1. There are options of procuring green energy from discoms. Not sure how this works.
2. CPOs are thinking on the line of sustainability rather than leaving the job to govt or discoms to see maintain the energy blend between Green and Non-Green energy.

This proves where there is a will, there is a way.

Disclaimer - I am in no way associated to Glida and this is not a promotion of their brand.

Complete Email that i received

[electric_eel]

While this is indeed commendable I think it is even more important to make the home charging greener. Here is my argument

1. Most of the charging (in terms of total energy used for charging) a privately owned BEV is
going to come from slow charging at home.

2. Even when I have a solar panel, the generation happens in the morning hours where as my charging essentially happens during the night.

3. Unless I am in an industrial area where there is a lot of electricity demand in daytime, I am not directly using the solar energy that I produce to charge my car.

Couple of things can further improve the situation

1. If my office provides payed slow charging I would be willing to connect to that knowing that it would mostly be coming from solar (my office hours thankfully happens to be in daylight).

2. If there is "greenness" coefficient that is sent to my home electric connection through the deployment of smart meters and my charging system can be programmed to look at the greenness
threshold and accordingly charge (this would also work for deep freezers for example) I can better utilize green energy.

That said the development that you talked about is going to help fleet operators and public transport a lot. I am assuming that solar will be the biggest chunk of our green energy source.

[ike]

Shell's charging network is christened "Shell recharge" and offers ultra fast charging and uses 100% renewable power. I'm associated with Shell but no commercial interests in Shell recharge.

[v01d]

Originally Posted by electric_eel

1. Most of the charging (in terms of total energy used for charging) a privately owned BEV is going to come from slow charging at home.

2. Even when I have a solar panel, the generation happens in the morning hours where as my charging essentially happens during the night.

3. Unless I am in an industrial area where there is a lot of electricity demand in daytime, I am not directly using the solar energy that I produce to charge my car.

Completely agree with (1) and (2). If the trend of overnight EV charging continues, we will end up with a worse situation in terms of emissions. Most night time power is fuel powered and costs the max to discoms.

I did not understand (3) i.e. how you would end up using the solar energy directly in an industrial area.

Workplace charging (when backed by solar) seems to me the way to go.

Also, when we're talking about green chargers, I think many fast chargers can be installed along with solar sheds. Isn't that the best way to ensure that chargers get green electricity? Nights would still be grid-dependent though.

[ferrarirules]

Originally Posted by electric_eel

While this is indeed commendable I think it is even more important to make the home charging greener. Here is my argument

It is easy to make home charging green in individual houses as Solar panels can be installed. If the net energy usage of the house including the electric car is lesser than the power produced by Solar panels, it means you are using green power irrespective of the time you are charging the car. How? - The surplus power produced by the solar goes to the grid and gets used by someone else. If that surplus power was not there, that someone would have used coal produced power from the grid. At night time, you are just using the surplus power produced in the day.

Example -

There are two houses which use 100 units electricity each a day and the split of usage is 50:50 between day and night. One of them has solar which produces 100 units in a day so in the day both houses are powered by Solar. At night, they use the other 100 units from the grid. So the house which produced 100 units of solar is effectively 100% green just that it is not using that electricity, all by itself.

Please note: Above is a very simple example. There can be a lot of complex permutations and combinations for this.

Originally Posted by ike

Shell's charging network is christened "Shell recharge" and offers ultra fast charging and uses 100% renewable power. I'm associated with Shell but no commercial interests in Shell recharge.

Thanks for sharing. Is this in India or outside India?

[ike]

Originally Posted by ferrarirules

Thanks for sharing. Is this in India or outside India?

This is in India. Shell has an app as well called Shell recharge India. That will give you the locations. Reiterating that I do not have commercial motives.

[electric_eel]

Originally Posted by v01d

I did not understand (3) i.e. how you would end up using the solar energy directly in an industrial area.

What I meant is that since my home solar is connected to the grid I would be producing energy in daytime which needs a matching recipient on the grid. i.e. there should be significant demand for power during daytime which is not true in a state like kerala (the peak demand is between 6:00 pm to 10 pm). A state with more industrial usage (e.g. Maharashtra) will have significant demand during day time and the solar production will be more effective.

Workplace charging (when backed by solar) seems to me the way to go.
Also, when we're talking about green chargers, I think many fast chargers can be installed along with solar sheds. Isn't that the best way to ensure that charger electricity?

And a battery backup. This is because the peak load when fast charging might be high and cannot be supplied by the solar panel alone. Assume that the solar panels produce
15 KW of power for a duration of about 12 hrs and the charger is 30 KW but utilised for
say 4 hours, then without a battery backup this setup will have to draw power from somewhere (from the grid).

Originally Posted by ferrarirules

It is easy to make home charging green in individual houses as Solar panels can be installed. If the net energy usage of the house including the electric car is lesser than the power produced by Solar panels, it means you are using green power irrespective of the time you are charging the car.

Yes you are using green power but only if you assume grid stabilization. i.e. the demand for power is averaged out effectively. (EV charging is by the way a good way to achieve this particularly in future when EVs can start supporting homes with their V2L capacity)

[ferrarirules]

Originally Posted by v01d

Completely agree with (1) and (2). If the trend of overnight EV charging continues, we will end up with a worse situation in terms of emissions. Most night time power is fuel powered and costs the max to discoms.

I did not understand (3) i.e. how you would end up using the solar energy directly in an industrial area.

Workplace charging (when backed by solar) seems to me the way to go.

Also, when we're talking about green chargers, I think many fast chargers can be installed along with solar sheds. Isn't that the best way to ensure that chargers get green electricity? Nights would still be grid-dependent though.

No chargers are not making it worse in terms of emissions. In the day time, the power from solar offsets production from other electricity sources.

A roof top solar in residential area can power industries. It is not happening today but say a day comes when residential solar production is beyond the electricity use in that area, the surplus electricity will flow to area where there is demand. All is connected to the grid.

For solar based chargers, it is difficult to implement fast chargers as there will be huge space needed for even implementing a 30 KW fast chargers.

Originally Posted by electric_eel

Yes you are using green power but only if you assume grid stabilization. i.e. the demand for power is averaged out effectively. (EV charging is by the way a good way to achieve this particularly in future when EVs can start supporting homes with their V2L capacity)

As of today, individual house solar production is way lower than the demand in the area. Even if it is higher than the demand, it will flow to grid to be used somewhere else.


Finally, the article was about buying green power from discom and letting discom figure out how they get green power.

[v01d]

Originally Posted by electric_eel

What I meant is that since my home solar is connected to the grid I would be producing energy in daytime which needs a matching recipient on the grid. i.e. there should be significant demand for power during daytime which is not true in a state like kerala (the peak demand is between 6:00 pm to 10 pm). A state with more industrial usage (e.g. Maharashtra) will have significant demand during day time and the solar production will be more effective.

And a battery backup. This is because the peak load when fast charging might be high and cannot be supplied by the solar panel alone.

Oh okay. I live in a city and demand during the day isn't a problem. Discoms approve of solar installation easily based on the minimum demand at the transformer. We have 20 installations at present in a society of ~240 houses.

Agreed about battery pack. And that'd mean more emissions

It'd be good if the cars could accept as much power as is available, just like the older bulbs. They used to lighten up no matter what voltage was given to them. Sometimes bright, sometimes dimmer.

Originally Posted by ferrarirules

As of today, individual house solar production is way lower than the demand in the area. Even if it is higher than the demand, it will flow to grid to be used somewhere else.

From what I understand, excess electricity can flow back from the transformer only upto the substation level where it is sent back into the ground. So I'm not sure if domestic solar electricity can flow back to industrial areas.

And thus offsetting will work only as long as night time consumption remains < day time consumption on a substation level. But if EVs become a norm, we'd break that equation very soon. Check out the attached image from this report on Electric Mobility.

[Dr.Car]

Originally Posted by v01d

Completely agree with (1) and (2). If the trend of overnight EV charging continues, we will end up with a worse situation in terms of emissions. Most night time power is fuel powered and costs the max to discoms.

But can't this problem be solved by using a battery backup which stores the energy converted by the solar panels? Ex- The Tesla Powerwall. I know this isn't available in India as of now but I'm pretty sure we'll get these options in the future.

Here's a link to Tesla Powerwall which explains it's working https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

[TheRandomGuy]

Originally Posted by ike

Shell's charging network is christened "Shell recharge" and offers ultra fast charging and uses 100% renewable power. I'm associated with Shell but no commercial interests in Shell recharge.

So I had a chance to visit a EV meetup of sorts at a Shell Recharge outlet near my home. I spoke at lengths with the operations manager over there at this promise of 100% GREEN power for the chargers.

What he explained was, the power what is delivered via the chargers are actually your normal day to day power which is delivered at that area, city etc.
There is no different power lines to get just Green power.

So instead what Shell does is, they measure the units consumed and then PAY the DISCOM a certain amount which will be utilized for Green energy source development etc.

This is a scheme direct from the govt and I am sure the Charger network in this OP will be doing too.

[SKC-auto]

Originally Posted by TheRandomGuy

So instead what Shell does is, they measure the units consumed and then PAY the DISCOM a certain amount which will be utilized for Green energy source development etc.

Yes, that is how it works, laying a HV line from solar farms to Chargers is not feasible, also renewables at a particular site are intermittent.

In some Western countries even an individual can buy renewable power from discom's. Example in UK, they have Octopus energy, which buys and sells renewable energy from Individuals. They sometimes pay for consuming surplus electricity, so charging your car earns you money. Can someone fill petrol and pay me some money .

Discoms need to ensure they buy more renewables, not sure how good their accounting is in India.

[EV Fan]

Originally Posted by SKC-auto

Yes, that is how it works, laying a HV line from solar farms to Chargers is not feasible, also renewables at a particular site are intermittent.

The T&D network (Transmission & Distribution) is unified. So it does not distinguish between coal or green sources of power, its bothered with the KWh's, just the units.

2 ways for any business to declare they are consuming green energy are:
- MOU's (Memorandum of understanding) or PPA's (Power Purchase Agreement) with a green energy producer. Whereby the company pays for whatever the generator produces and pays the surcharge for using T&D. So gets the green bragging rights but has to directly engage with the Green Power producer (including the risks).
Can be a legal & bureaucratic headache
- Easier way is purchasing REC's ( Renewable Energy Certificate). If the company consumes 1000 KWh (=1MWh) it can purchase 1 REC and brag on record that it consumed Green Power. Far easier than the above process.
REC's come from Green energy generators who sell electricity (KWh) in the standard market without the green credentials (so basically competing with the regular coal or gas or even hydro units purely in terms of units generated) and then sell the green credentials separately as REC (1 REC = Green certification for 1 MWh of electricity).

Originally Posted by TheRandomGuy

So instead what Shell does is, they measure the units consumed and then PAY the DISCOM a certain amount which will be utilized for Green energy source development etc.

This is a scheme direct from the govt and I am sure the Charger network in this OP will be doing too.

I think these guys are using the REC mechanism. So if they consume lets say a 1000 units(KWh), then they accordingly buy 1 REC over the cost of units consumed, to gain the right to declare that their consumption is from a Green Energy Source.

[ike]

Originally Posted by TheRandomGuy

What he explained was, the power what is delivered via the chargers are actually your normal day to day power which is delivered at that area, city etc.
There is no different power lines to get just Green power.

So instead what Shell does is, they measure the units consumed and then PAY the DISCOM a certain amount which will be utilized for Green energy source development etc.

Yes, these are called renewable energy certificates (RECs) and are a very interesting line of business that Energy companies use to optimize their positions. Remember the carbon offset that is offered while booking airline tickets where they collect some money and say you have helped plant 5 trees that have offset 1 tonne of Carbon? It works similarly.