Dear Sir,

I was very excited to see the article about a new project for a VPP in Bermuda under the name of “Mesh” (Proposal to build a virtual power plant — The Royal Gazette, September 24).

This is really big news if you are at all interested in things energy — or electricity supply — in Bermuda. I must say that the lack of actual information is not helpful but, sadly, in Bermuda, not mysterious.

It is a fact of life here that the proposers of this initiative will come under unwelcome scrutiny and pressure from civil, commercial and political sides. The amount of time and effort that will have to be spent dealing with these, and with the flood of public inquiries, can be large. For a small group looking to test a very new (for Bermuda) technical idea against headwinds from both the utility and the regulatory apparatus, this could undermine the entire project.

The website is similarly sparse on information. It seems that potential “members” looking to join the VPP trial will have to do their own Googling to bootstrap their understanding of how a VPP might work.

A few well-chosen links to websites that would be helpful to those not already knowledgeable about VPPs would be a big help.

As a longtime proponent of integration of the various “distributed generation assets” on our grid, I would posit that this effort needs as much attention and resources as were put into the analysis of the “wind project” and the “solar finger”. It certainly holds more potential to reduce our costs without massive investment than those do.

Here is a really radical proposal: the ministry responsible for energy (MoE) should reach out to this group and offer to assist them, in kind and with funding, to develop the public-facing and public-education components of this project and facilitate data collection. This should not be done by, or through, the RA. The RA is simply too conflicted here. This effort by the MoE would increase awareness and knowledge on the part of the public which would foster interest, engagement and support not just for this effort but for future electricity-focused projects as well. It would also give the ministry valuable insight into how things can work at the very practical level when there are fewer bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

Just a few details that might reassure people who already have solar and/or battery systems that are wary of loss of control: the owner always has full control over when and how energy flows between their system and the grid. When the system is set up, at any point in time the owner can, for example, ensure that only surplus generation will be exported. In the case of batteries they can say that the battery should not fall below a certain charge level at certain times. This last is important when EV batteries are involved since it makes sure that your car always has “enough gas in the tank” to let you do the driving you want.

One more thing. The EV battery part of this is potentially the most important part. A typical fixed Tesla home battery is between 7 and 14kWh. An EV battery would run between 30 and 70kWh. That is two to ten times the fixed unit. What makes this important in Bermuda is that our mix of low speed, warm temperature and — especially — short car trips means that every EV owner has actually invested in three to five times as much battery as they really need.

A battery giving a range of 500 miles in Bermuda means the vehicle could be driven for 20 hours at speed. On average, trips here are more like an hour at most and a good half of the trip is either stopped or slow or coasting. Even if a person drives five hours a day, their battery remains 75 per cent unused. That battery represents a very large part (25 to 40 per cent) of the cost of the EV. So every EV owner has a substantial amount of money sitting outside their house doing nothing. Joining up to put that EV on a VPP could be worth serious money to the owner and pay them back for all that unused battery in their car.

An EV owner — and that will be most of us within 15 years — could look to offset not only the cost of electricity to actually drive their car (free gas) but also reduce their home Belco bill. All this without including solar.

If we consider that we have, as a community, 20,000-plus cars, and look 15-plus years or so forward, the unused capacity of our EV fleet could be (20,000 x 50kWh x 75 per cent) 750MWh. For perspective, that would run our total average grid load for more than eight hours a day. That is a very substantial national asset. In terms of the reduction in the need for ready and spinning reserve and peaking capacity alone the effect on generation costs will be real.

There is also a very large secondary benefit. Right now, the largest solar system that makes sense is one that just meets the demand at the exact time when the sun is shining most. Anything more is sold to Belco and is used to reduce their generation using diesel.

In other places with abundant sunshine, the low cost of the solar power to the grid has resulted in solar generation during peak sunshine hours actually being enough to reduce the demand to levels below the morning and evening use levels. This is the so-called “duck curve” of grid demand rather than the “daytime peak” curve we are used to here. Once that point is reached, it does not make sense to add more solar from the grid point of view since most of it is simply “curtailed” (not used). That limit on solar disappears when there is storage available to the grid to store that midday solar energy until it can be used later.

In Bermuda, having that kind of storage available could see solar electricity replacing diesel electricity for something like 50 to 75 per cent of our total consumption. Bearing in mind that under the new “generation” tariff, Belco currently pays 11 cents per kWh for solar and charges 25 cents when they sell that same kWh, it is pretty clear that if we can encourage VPPs that bring EV batteries online and keep adding private solar, we can look for rates to drop — perhaps by 30 per cent or more.

All that without any large-scale government or Belco investment.

Good on you, Mesh, and good luck!

JAN CARD

Smith’s