Researchers work on battery power sharing tool, swap stations to make EVs affordable

Researchers are working on two electric vehicle solutions, including a techlogy that would allow sharing of stored battery power with ar EV and even sell excess energy to make a fast buck, for making clean vehicles more ecomical, a professor at BITS Pilani said.

Along with power sharing tool vehicle-to-everything (V2X), researchers are also examining feasibility of battery swapping stations where an EV owner would simply replace batteries like refilling of gas cylinders, Hitesh Datt Mathur, associate professor at Birla Institute of Techlogy and Science (BITS), Pilani, said.

two solutions can make EVs ecomical as customers would t need to buy expensive heavy batteries which account for around 25-30 per cent of total cost of an EV currently.

research projects are sponsored by Department of Science and Techlogy and Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Mathur, who has designed an EV with V2X techlogy, said model is capable of sharing stored power with ar EV, a grid, hotels, malls etc.

" incentive could be seen by an example where a customer is charging EV with V2X feature at home at Rs 8 per unit and discharging some part of stored power at any commercial place at Rs 15 as commercial rates are higher than domestic rates of electricity," he suggested.

When EV is t in use, some part of stored energy may be sold to ors including grid, ar EV customer, even to some offices or homes.

If a customer sells 20 units equivalent of power during this discharge, he will have Rs 140 earned. power grid, at large, during peak hour, can also be supplemented by orderly mand owners of EVs with V2X feature.

"One can imagine a parking lot of a mall where, hundreds of V2X electric cars are parked for more than 6-7 hours in a day which is equivalent to a mid-sized power plant of 5 to 10 megawatt range since each electric car has battery power of 20-25 kilowatts. Even if 30-40 per cent customers decide to sell power to grid, it would be good eugh for that mall itself. All this would be executed through a mobile app," he said.

" project will develop a cyber physical network using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms," Mathur said.

However, project faces some challenges, he said. associated infrastructure at various commercial and n-commercial places to enable V2X EVs is a great challenge.

Developing battery swapping stations (BSS) is ar aspect of project as it would make EVs with V2X feature affordable because one does t have to buy a battery of EV that costs approximately 25-30 per cent of total cost of vehicle, Mathur said.

"This would just be like refilling of gas cylinders we use. opening of BSS has a huge commercial opportunity and many private players can be given option to open a BSS (similar to petrol pumps)," he ded.

BSS may also have ir own renewable power generation sources like solar, wind etc.