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Electric & Eclectic with Roger Atkins - LinkedIn Top Voice for EV
In conversation with the past, present, and future movers and shakers of the electric vehicle eco-system. Upstream in mining and mineral processing and downstream in batteries and charging infrastructures - and all points in between! I will draw on friendships and experiences from almost 40 years in the auto industry - almost half of that embedded within the nascent EV industry.
Failure and success are all part of my story...and that of many people I know. YOU will hear about it all.
Electric & Eclectic with Roger Atkins - LinkedIn Top Voice for EV
Exploring the Potential of Vehicle-to-Everything Technology with Fermata Energy
Ready to turn your electric vehicle's battery into a goldmine? Discover the opportunities of Vehicle to Everything (V2X) technology in this enlightening conversation with Claire Weiller, Director of European Strategy Partnerships at Fermata Energy. Strap in as Claire guides us on a journey from the birth of V2X with the Japanese CHAdeMO system, through the adoption of NACS by major automotive giants like Ford, GM, Mercedes, and start-ups Fisker and Rivian etc...
How would you like to transform your car's battery into a power hub for your home? Buckle up as we shift gears into the realm of bi-directional charging, highlighting the vital interoperability between car and charger manufacturers, and the innovative vehicle-to-home technology that could potentially turn your vehicle's battery into a profitable asset. We also put the pedal to the metal with a deep dive into battery chemistry and health, and shine a spotlight on the optimal charging regimes to maximise battery performance. It's time to turbocharge your knowledge on the future of vehicle technology with Fermata Energy.
Hello and welcome to the Electric and Eclectic podcast show with Roger Atkins and some truly smart and amazingly interesting guests.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a few topics there China and Pact. Maybe the first one is why did China were developed and why has CCS really taken so long to develop bi-directional communication?
Speaker 3:But to start with the next issue, so my guest today is Claire Weiller from Fermata Energy and she's Director of European Strategy Partnerships, busy with all things that are happening, and they're happening at a pace here in Europe as they are all over the world, so I guess you're very busy right now, Claire. Thanks for finding time for me.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, roger, for having me on your podcast.
Speaker 3:Well, look, I've been very keen to do that because the first time we met was in Amsterdam at the Aardeto gathering, so that was talking about cyber security and many other things, and I was very taken by what you presented around vehicle to X, vehicle to grid, vehicle to load all of this. You showed some case study examples, you showed some of the monetisation opportunity that people had and I can assure you, being the owner of an electric vehicle that has the capability to do vehicle to home, I'm very keen for this to happen as soon as possible, from a personal point of view, apart from helping people understand what's happening. So do you want to give a quick intro as to what Fermata do and what you're doing there before I get into a few questions I've got, if that's okay?
Speaker 2:Definitely so. Fermata Energy is a leading player, mostly based in the US, of vehicle to everything technology. So vehicle to everything refers to vehicle to grid, vehicle to building, vehicle to home or vehicle to load, which basically is all the applications of using an electric vehicle to discharge our back out from the vehicle and use it in these different locations. By doing that we are able to monetise the storage, the energy storage value that's in that electric vehicle, to provide additional revenues to the vehicle owner and save money on their energy bills.
Speaker 3:What's not alike with any of that. Claire, honestly, you say it in a nutshell, and that, to me, has to be the destiny of the battery in an electric vehicle. It's got to do two jobs, hasn't it?
Speaker 2:Exactly. Vehicles are parked 95% of the time and the storage capacity, for example, in a Nissan Leaf today is the equivalent of four Tesla Powerwalls. So for a homeowner, an individual user, why buy four home batteries when you have that equivalent capacity just sitting there in your garage in that vehicle, all in Europe? So at the European level there's going to be two teratours of energy storage that is mobile, that is just available in the system through electric vehicles. That's what's planned by 2030 and that's planned to be three times more than the energy storage that's going to be in grid scale batteries and other stationary storage batteries. So what we do at Fermata Energy is, through smart software solutions, we unlock the potential of that energy that's stored in people's electric vehicles.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, look, as I said, I'm very keen to understand this and share what you tell me with my audience here on LinkedIn or on the podcast, electric and eclectic podcast. So a couple of quick things in my mind then, so, and tell me if I'm wrong in any of this. This is just my observation Vehicle to grid and I love the fact you call it vehicle to everything, by the way, rather than V2X, because I think that confuses a lot of people. I think vehicle to everything is a much better term, so hats off to you for that. But this all began, didn't it with, in many ways, with the Japanese, with the Chadamo system and with Nissan, because of the impact of the tsunami and a pretty dreadful time that Japanese people had in trying to manage them in natural disasters, manage their grid. So that I'm right, aren't I? That's kind of where it began at any kind of commercial scale, is that correct?
Speaker 2:It is exactly it. So Nissan from Japan, of course, had one of the first commercially available electric vehicles, the Nissan Leaf. And when that disaster happened with the nuclear power station at Fukushima in Japan in 2011, the team that had already founded the Chadamo Association, which is an industry-wide member-open association that was dedicated to developing a universal standard for communication for electric vehicle charging, that association basically developed bi-directional capability, so vehicle-to-home capability, on the charging system on that Nissan vehicle. And so it all started in Japan where, in the aftermath of that catastrophe, people could use the battery in their Nissan Leaf to power their home while the grid was down and while the nuclear power stations were being fixed.
Speaker 3:Well, ain't that a story when you think about it? It's over a decade ago, so I'm not going to ask you to account for whole continents or countries. You know ambitions or activities or whatever, but why have CHAdeMO put this into the protocol so early on? You know, as we say over a decade ago, haven't we seen that in CCS or in NACS? In NACS, aka the Tesla system? Because one of the reasons I definitely wanted to catch up with you sooner rather than later was the arrival of all of these announcements from Ford and from GM and from Fisker and from Rivian, saying they will adopt, instead of carrying on with CCS, they will adopt the NACS system. Well, where does that leave us with vehicle-to-grid, given what you've just explained and where we are? Can you give me a little flavour of that or an insight to what that means at the moment, please, because I'm a bit confused by it, if I'm honest.
Speaker 2:Certainly. Well, there's a few topics there to unpack. Maybe the first one is why did CHAdeMO develop it and why has CCS really taken so long to develop by directional communication? But to start with the NACS issue, so recently we heard Tesla releasing the technical specification of the NACS connector, which is their standard for North America.
Speaker 2:So, it's important to know that this is a standard for a connector, so that's the piece of electrical and mechanical equipment. So it's the connector that's at the end of the cable. And it so happens the NACS connector has five pins whereas the CCS connector has seven pins. That's one of the differences. However, it's a physical hardware piece so it doesn't in itself dictate the power flows, whether it's enabling two-way power flows or preventing two-way power flows between the car and the charger. What really is needed to have a successful vehicle to everything operation is to have the right communication standard built on the vehicle and on the charger that enables that two-way power flow. So NACS in itself is kind of agnostic to bi-directional charging technology. It is possible, it will be doing it. And the second bit that's probably interesting there is the NACS connector actually uses the same communication protocol as the CCS connector, so it's the 15118 communication standard. So the latest version of that standard will allow bi-directional flows.
Speaker 3:Got it. I love it when I talk to someone who knows what they're talking about and can actually define what the standards are, the protocols and those, the difference between A and B, because we do get a lot of conversation on LinkedIn particularly well, and certainly on Twitter or whatever it's called now when people just make assumptions or they say things without having that grounding of knowledge. So thank you for that clarity. You've already told me several things there that I didn't know, to be honest, but you did say you're also going to share with us. Why is it taken, how did Chatham get this right so long ago and why have we been waiting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I think there's a bit of sort of political history there, where the CHAdeMO standard was really launched by a utility, the Tokyo Electric Power Company in Japan, and they saw from the very beginning the potential of bi-directional technology, of making this possible. The CCS standard is developed by the auto industry, mainly European and North American car manufacturers, and they seem much less in a hurry to think about this part of the EV puzzle. Let's say they're just coming out now with their mass market electric vehicle models and it seems like bi-directional in their minds unfortunately, is put to a kind of second order priority in their development of the EV market.
Speaker 3:Again. That's kind of obvious in a way how you've explained that. But you're the first person who's kind of said, yeah, that's why this is the reason, and I mean that makes complete sense. So I know you can't speak for every manufacturer, but just walk me through this. I have a Volkswagen ID Buzz.
Speaker 3:I'm very lucky to have that. You know very appreciative to have a company where I can acquire that type of vehicle, and I know that it is pre-equipped with the ability to deliver bi-directional charging. It says that in the menu it gives me a quota of hours that I can actually use. So I presume they've done some kind of modelling or some assessment as to how the battery can perform, so on and so forth. But as of right now I don't have a charger I can plug that into, so I can't connect that car in any way, shape or form to do vehicle to home, for example, and take that cheap electric just at night and then use it for the house during the day. I know you don't speak for Voxfagan but, claire, but when might I be able to do that? Have you got any idea?
Speaker 2:Well the amount of energy is working with a lot of the car manufacturers and a lot of the charger hardware manufacturers behind the scenes, so we know they're all at different stages of maturity. A lot of them are developing the right technologies and it's taking time. There's five-year production cycles on vehicles, for example, and we think there is this dependency on the 15118-20 communication standard that was published last year actually, but we'll take a bit of time for the OEMs to implement. So we started to see the Ford F-150 in the US came out with vehicle to home backup power capability. That's sort of the first mass market model and we are expecting that towards the end of next year or in the next two years from now, let's say that many more models will come equipped with vehicle to home technology.
Speaker 3:And then, what about the chargers, though, in order to couple that to the house or the grid indirectly?
Speaker 2:They will be ready by that time as well, because the car manufacturers and the charger manufacturers are actually working together.
Speaker 2:Because you need that interoperability between those cases of equipment and actually unfortunately that communication protocol is not a standard. It doesn't completely specify and mandate specific implementations, so there is some room for interpretation and that's why they're having to work together to prove that interoperability. A lot of vehicle OEMs are coming out with requests for proposals from the chargers and I think we're going to see a lot of white labeling of that charging equipment. So when you're offered a vehicle to home car it will sort of automatically come with the charger.
Speaker 3:Well, I know you alluded to some of this at the beginning in terms of turning the battery into an asset rather than a liability, as it's seen by many people, and I would definitely be of the opinion that, whereas before, with combustion cars, that fuel tank does nothing other than you use it when you move the wheels, to actually have a fuel tank, aka a battery, that then actually powers up your home or indeed, in theory, as we go forward, the grid.
Speaker 3:Well, what's not to like? In every aspect, this is exciting stuff and I think you could easily argue that it's essential stuff because, going back to some of the metrics I think you mentioned about energy storage systems, we need to tap all of these batteries to do as much work as possible. We can't afford, in terms of natural resources and the ability to build so many batteries, to have them sat around doing nothing. It's a luxury we can ill afford. So, forgive me if I'm going to get into a subject that you're not familiar with. Tell me if you're not, obviously, but is all of this chemistry agnostic? We're seeing NMC batteries, lfp batteries, lmo batteries. Regardless of the chemistry, do they work equally well in terms of bidirectionality, putting the energy in, taking the energy out?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, for the most part the answer is yes. V2X is chemistry agnostic and it can work on different battery chemistries, but we can think of it as it's just one use case for a car battery. So all batteries are designed either for energy applications or for power applications. Some chemistries are better for one and others for the other, and in the automotive space the batteries usually require both to provide the range, so that's the energy density, and to provide the acceleration, so that's the power density.
Speaker 2:And so vehicle to X doesn't do anything worse than driving does to a battery per se. In when we're charging and discharging with the formata energy chargers at least the vehicle batteries the C-rate is pretty low, so that's the ratio of the power that the charger can deliver to the size of storage of the battery. And really for us, the worst thing that we think in our technical team that can be done for an electric vehicle battery is super fast charging. And with vehicle to X you can actually manage the battery health. Some studies have shown that vehicle to X can actually improve battery health and that's because we're consciously optimizing and making those decisions of when and how fast and how much to charge and discharge the electric vehicle batteries.
Speaker 3:Again, that answers a number of questions that have been in my mind for some time, but very neatly and succinctly. Thanks, claire, and it does make sense. If you think of the battery and I think this was explained to me some years ago it's a bit like a muscle. If you exercise it regularly but you don't, you know, dramatically exercise it, you won't tear it, you'll build it up and it will be the better for it. So I think the charging regime, where it works within, within, say, a 20%, 80% level, or if you can give it that healthy exercise if you like in terms of energy and energy out, yeah, that all makes sense, absolutely so in terms of what you're doing.
Speaker 2:On the battery. Just to point out on the battery health. So we work within the parameters that are given to us for each different battery chemistry by the vehicle manufacturer. In addition, we work within the limits that users of our system feel comfortable with. So if someone doesn't want us to discharge their battery below what affords them 40 miles of range, for example they can set that to limit our discharge activity. And then, finally, we have our own battery health management intelligence internally, with patents that have to do with measuring battery temperature and understanding how our activities and vehicle to X impacts the battery health. And so, because of all this, really Formata Energy is the first company and the only vehicle to grid company, vehicle to X company, that has been formally approved for working within the battery warranty of the Nissan Leaf, which is the vehicle that we that we work with in the US.
Speaker 2:So that was announced by Nissan that we respect the battery warranty with our V2X operations, and that's something that that is, you know, a unique recognition of the efforts that we make to to protect battery health.
Speaker 3:That's significant. That really is significant because I think your point there about warranty in general is something that we're still at the relatively early stage of EVs and batteries, and I think most people, I think with a lot of documentation don't necessarily check out exactly what the warranty says. And if you systematically and regularly super fast charge your vehicle, of whatever type, you know the physics, the science, the chemistry of it all will not take kindly to that happening. You know, month after month, year after year, you've got a kind of well, basically, pace yourself I suppose you could put it like that. But the fact you've got that recognition, that collaboration with a manufacturer and I'm sure there'll be more to come Well, I'm sure that's what you're planning to happen.
Speaker 3:That's, that's very good news. That's actually very reassuring, especially for people well, anyone really, but people particularly who buy an owner vehicle. They want to know that, that that performance of the battery will be optimal, that life of the battery will be optimal, you know, etc. Etc. So that's all good stuff. So, claire, tell me something what sort of partnerships are you looking at? You mentioned, you know, as a director, your strategic partnerships. Can you give me a little idea of what that is? I mean, somebody may be watching, listening to this. What sort of what are the friends you're looking for, claire?
Speaker 2:Well, there are many different stakeholders in the industry that are required to make DTX work end to end. So my goal in a nutshell is to work with vehicle manufacturers, the OEMs, and charger manufacturers and utilities. All those companies provide the pieces that are necessary to make vehicles grid work. On the utility side, we're really working to break down regulatory barriers, to provide clear regulatory frameworks for this technology, which at the moment is a bit in a no man's land in between generation, which is a type of storage assets, and EV charging, which is a type of demand assets. So not all countries have sort of figured out the rules that will apply to vehicle to X.
Speaker 2:Others on the utility side are making sure that there's the right compensation framework for end users. When you export that power from your vehicle and it gets used in the grid to support congested transformer substation, for example, do people get compensated enough for that energy? So that's a sort of longer term partnerships on the utility side and then really the key ones for us are on the vehicle manufacturing side. The OEMs really hold the key, I think, to launching the market for vehicle to X. There's a lot of them in Europe Germany and the UK, france, everywhere in Europe. A lot of these companies are global. What I'm trying to do with Formata Energy is add to the relationships that we're already developing and carrying in the US and expanding their reach internationally.
Speaker 3:As you've alluded to a few times in this conversation. The monetising opportunity here, the recurring revenue opportunity here, is potentially very big. I think, given that so much of the challenge for OEMs in shifting to electrification is about losing recurring revenues, particularly with friction parts in the classic internal combustion engine, some of this, it seems to me, offers up an opportunity for OEMs to potentially be utility players, in effect energy players, whatever label or badge you want to give them. Which brings me onto thinking equally about fleets, because I hope I haven't got this wrong. I think it's on your website. There's a story about school buses, I guess the big yellow school buses in America. They do a job twice a day. They take the kids to school, they pick the kids up from school, then the rest of the time they're not doing anything. That is on your website, isn't it? I hope I've got it right. What's that story about? Can you just remind me? I only looked at it briefly, if I'm really honest. What's that story about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are working with the Charter of Vendors to implement V2X with school buses Because, as you say, it's a very promising application. There's also a lot of public funding actually that's going to support the electrification of school buses and then sometimes specifically also making them bi-directional. That's funding coming out from the EPA, the CEC and the US, so we're definitely involved in all of those opportunities.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good. Then the other thing I noticed, one of my former well, not associate as such, but certainly a friend that I haven't seen so much of lately, but goes right back to the very beginning of where we are with electric vehicles, to GM EV1 days, which is Tony Posawatz. You decided to join your board recently, is that right?
Speaker 2:Tony Posawatz has thankfully been on our board for probably over 10 years, or just about 10 years, and he has stepped in to the role of CEO of Fermata Energy, so we're delighted to have him, his experience and all his industry contacts in our CEO Wow.
Speaker 3:Well, do you know what? He's either kept that very quiet or I've not paid attention regularly enough, because I've certainly seen Tony many times within that 10-year frame. So we've been talking about other things wireless charging and other stuff, to be honest. But there you are. I learn something new every day. So, look, Claire, we could go and talk about a lot more things, but, as I mentioned at the beginning, I particularly wanted to understand this business of V2X in general vehicle to everything, as you call it. I definitely wanted to understand the business about CCS and Nax, et cetera. You've put me right on that. You put anyone listening right on that, which is great, and you've given me some really great, straightforward answers about where we are with the practicality of this, where it sits in terms of who owns which bit and the fact that it's going to happen and, like I said right at the beginning, watching you and your presentation in Amsterdam. Well, that must be about a year ago now or something like that.
Speaker 3:Something like that. Yeah, yeah, very taken by it. So good luck with what you're doing. Please crack on with trying to get a few of these things qualified by either big organizations or countries, et cetera, because I want to start plugging in my vehicle to my house and obviously you've explained how some of that is going to happen in terms of challenge and time, so that's great. So what's you want to say before we go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so really the three major drivers for B2G and all of its flavors B2G, b2h, b2 building are, firstly, using the storage that comes free with the electric cars to support more renewable energy in the system providing energy to households during power outages. So the vehicle-to-home application where the grid is unstable. And thirdly is the more financial motivator, which is earning money from helping the grid. There are utilities that pay people to give their power at peak times and that's the third application that we're working on at Firmata Energy, and there's a lot of announcements. A lot of policy is really supporting vehicles to everything, so that's definitely steps in the right direction.
Speaker 2:There's still a lot of work to be done. I mean GM, for example, recently announced that all of their EVs would be bidirectional by 2026. We have the California Senate Bill mandating bidirectional technology by 2030. I'm hoping that we will pass something similar on the European side with the European Commission, but that's in preparation and, yes, it's technology. That's just a win-win. It's useful for all of the actors, the EV owners, and we just need to get moving faster.
Speaker 3:I love it. Get moving faster. That's my kind of talk. So, Claire, look, thank you very much for joining us. Really appreciate your time. Good luck with everything that's happening and do say hello to Mr Posawatz next time you see him.
Speaker 2:Definitely will do. Thank you so much, Roger
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Great Thanks for listening to the show and make sure you follow Roger on LinkedIn, where you'll discover almost all there is to know about the spectacular electric vehicle revolution.
