International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), a US-based information technology company, has joined the Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks (EDISON) research consortium. The consortium is aimed at developing an infrastructure for electric vehicles powered by the sustainable energy. The Danish government will partly fund the research because of the environmental benefits of the electric vehicle technologies.
The consortium will initially develop smart technologies to be implemented on Bornholm Island.
The Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks (EDISON) consortium consists of IBM, DONG Energy, the regional energy company of Oestkraft, Technical University of Denmark, Siemens, Eurisco and the Danish Energy Association.
The market introduction and investment plans in the Denmark will result in upwards of 10% of the country’s vehicles being all electric or the hybrid electric in the coming years. In order to decrease CO2-emissions associated to electrified transport, global attention on the vehicles and infrastructure that will increase the use of renewable energy for mobility has increased. To attain this on a large scale, electric vehicles need smart technologies to control charging and billing and to ensure the stability of the overall energy system.
Denmark, the host of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change conference and the most energy efficient country in the EU, further underscores its ambitions here with the Edison project announcement, stated Guido Bartels, general manager of IBM’s Global Energy & Utilities industry. There is already broad consensus that both wind energy and electric vehicles have enormous potential for a sustainable energy future, bringing the two together promises to be a winning combination.
The Bornholm Island is designed to function as a testbed. The Bornholm Island has 40,000 inhabitants and an energy infrastructure characterized by large proportion of wind energy. Creating a testbed on the island will enable researchers to study how the energy system functions as number of electric vehicles increases. The studies will be simulation-based and will not impact the security of supply on the island.
Within the project, researchers from the IBM Denmark and from IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory will develop the smart technologies that synchronize charging of the electric vehicles with availability of wind in the grid. The company has also contributed a hardware platform to Technical University of Denmark that will be utilized for large-scale real-time simulations of energy system and the impact of electric vehicles. When finished, the project will contribute to reaching political objective of increasing the share of renewable energy in the overall energy consumption.
Electric vehicles are one of the technologies we can use to incorporate renewable energy into transportation, stated Danish Minister of Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard. That is why we are making it possible for electric cars to enter the market in order to replace conventional fuel. Projects like Edison show how it’s possible to create sustainable solutions in real life.
While a variety of companies have announced the initiatives in Denmark that will add to the overall adoption of electric vehicle system, EDISON will address the whole end-to-end process to make system possible, this includes ensuring the overall grid stability and supporting the increased use of renewable energy. The smart technologies developed within the EDISON may also be applied to management of other types of decentralized batteries throughout the grid.
Electric vehicles have enormous potential for creating a cleaner energy system as well as a cleaner transport system, stated Tim Mondorf, Nordic Business Development Executive, Energy & Environment at IBM. We look forward to creating a working, intelligent management system first on the real-life test laboratory of the island of Bornholm, and in the longer term for Denmark as a whole.