Download document () of 20
Send email
Download
You have exceeded the download limit
Fully Charged is a widely watched YouTube channel and website that focuses on electric vehicles and renewable energy. It was founded by well-known writer and broadcaster, Robert Llewellyn.
We commissioned an episode of Fully Charged Plus, in which we spoke to Robert about our ‘Buildings as a Grid’ approach to energy transition and how it unites the power needs of buildings and EVs with on-site renewable energy.
Caroline Royle and Giuseppe Sgro, who both work in our Buildings as a Grid team, used our bespoke model to explain, with Robert’s help, the decentralised approach to energy management that will characterise the energy transition.
I love this. What a brilliant model. It shows us how the grid could operate in the future
Our approach supports the operation of an EV charging system. If you are a building owner, leaseholder, manager, developer, investor, architect, consultant, buildings designer or vehicle fleet manager, you may be thinking about installing EV chargers at your site. Discover how we can help.
Giuseppe has an MSc in Energy Engineering, with a specialism in energy for smart cities. He wrote his thesis on ‘ICT as a driving energy-efficient solution for retrofitting existing buildings’. Since 2018, Giuseppe has worked for Eaton and he is currently focusing on the energy transition in buildings, with reference to his recent experience in energy storage marketing.
Caroline has an educational background in Mathematics, Science, Chemistry and Biology. She has worked in technical companies since 2008, starting in sales and large projects, and recently becoming Business Development Manager for Buildings as a Grid. She is passionate about effective power management and the shift to integrate renewables, energy storage and EV charging infrastructures into buildings. Caroline works for Eaton in the UK.
Our model depicts how energy flows in a typical town could work if different types of buildings were to adopt our Buildings as a Grid approach. We are confident our decentralised approach to energy management is realistic in the push towards net-zero. The model was used on Fully Charged Plus to explain how Buildings as a Grid works, why it is important, and how it relates to EV charging.
The buildings featured on the model include a hospital, a residential apartment building, a logistics depot served by a fleet of EV vans and an office building with a car park for workplace EV charging and fleet EV charging. The examples of renewable energy generation featured are on-site solar PV panels on buildings and a small wind farm. A sub-station brings in energy from the grid.
Buildings as a Grid is all about reducing fossil fuel power use and wringing every drop of energy from renewable sources. That means being clever about power management. At Eaton, we’re power management specialists, so that’s what we do, mostly at the large site level.
In the model we can see that commercial businesses such as logistics centers, often have large roof spaces available to them or even space for a wind turbine, so the scale of their opportunity to invest in renewables is much larger than it is for householders. It is larger sites, like these, that can make the most difference when it comes to adding more renewable power to the grid. And do remember that they can add by not taking away… Any large site has this opportunity.
On this model, we’ve got a hospital, some offices, a shopping complex, and an apartment block. All these buildings can store off-peak power from the grid in energy storage. Energy storage systems are not large. All these sites can do the ‘add by not taking away’ thing. We call it ‘peak shaving’ in the power industry. Even better, if they have any way of generating renewable power on site – and lots of them do – they can use that power to meet new loads that many of them are adding, such as EV charging. As bi-directional flows become more common, they may even be able to feed power back to the grid, although the mechanisms for doing so that are some way off, yet.
EV drivers need to know they can always charge their vehicle wherever they go, at the right speed and at the right price. That makes EV charging infrastructure critical to the take-up of EVs.
Most large buildings will need - and want to offer – EV charging. Think of fleets that are switching to EVs; apartment building residents who need access multi-user charging; and EV-owning households that might need to re-charge at their workplace, on a day out at a shopping complex, or on a long-stay visit to a hospital, university, hotel, something like that. Buildings as a Grid is the ideal way for large sites like these to provide EV charging infrastructure, because it’s a flexible solution that supports EV charging and more. It’s an investment in EV charging, and it’s also an investment in energy transition.
This approach is more fundamental than simply adding a few chargers to existing infrastructure. Building owners and developers will need to respond to the demands of energy transition. It’s not just about EVs, electrification is much broader than that, and fossil fuel use will be drastically reduced in the years ahead. There is already legislative and regulatory pressure on building owners to design electrified systems into their new-build properties and think about how to renovate existing sites. By taking a strategic approach to power management and EV charging now, building owners will reap the benefits. They will be ready to add as many chargers as they need, at a time when they want to do it, as well as access all the electrical power required for everything else their building needs to do.
The changes that are happening now, and those that will happen in the future, will affect the way power management systems are set up in buildings. It’s impossible to just keep adding loads and assets without thinking through how the power management system will cope.
Save money, make money
EV charging is a gateway to energy transition, and sites can save money and make money by establishing the right system for their site. They can save money by ‘load shifting’ to use as much of their stored off-peak power, as possible, and remember those solar panels and wind turbines– businesses are making some of their own renewable power, too, and it can be added to their power mix. .
Fleet owners can gain a fantastic level of insight into their total cost of fleet ownership and total cost of mobility because they can see the amounts of electricity used in their vehicles and know where the power comes from.
A fully integrated system gives them a lot of insight and control over their costs. Businesses like shopping centers and entertainment complexes might want to levy a fee for charging, or make it part of their promotional offers, and by using the software in our integrated system, they can do that. They can make money and build customer loyalty in that way.
Contact us. We’ve got sites and offices all over Europe, all over the world, and we’ve been in power management for more than 100 years, so we really understand electrification, electrical safety, and security. In the long run, that’s really going to matter for EV charging and more.
MyEatonFAQs
