IBM builds grid for electric cars

IBM announced its membership in the Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks research consortium, a Denmark-based collaborative developing an infrastructure that will make large scale adoption of electric vehicles powered by sustainable energy possible.

Market introduction and investment plans in Denmark will result in upwards of 10 percent of the country’s vehicles being all electric or hybrid electric during the coming years. To achieve this on a large scale, electric vehicles require smart technologies to control charging and billing and to ensure the stability of the overall energy system.

The first step of the consortium is to develop smart technologies to be implemented on the Danish island of Bornholm, designed to function as a testbed. The island has 40,000 inhabitants and an energy infrastructure characterized by a large proportion of wind energy.

Within the project, researchers from IBM Denmark and from IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory will develop technologies that synchronize the charging of the electric vehicles with the availability of wind in the grid. IBM has also contributed a hardware platform to the Technical University of Denmark that will be used for large-scale real-time simulations of the energy system and the impact of electric vehicles. When completed, the project will contribute to reaching the political objective of increasing the share of renewable energy in overall energy consumption.