Integrating electric vehicles into the grid could prevent blackouts
Electric vehicles consume a large amount of energy. As more people get electric cars and charge them at home, it puts a strain on our current electricity distribution, but researchers from the CSIRO says it doesn’t have to be that way.
They devised a computer module to model how electric vehicles could be integrated into the electricity grid to make it more reliable and efficient.
Electric share of new car market in 2020 (%). Australians bought just under a million new cars in 2020. Less than 7,000 were electric.
Buying and running electric vehicles for business fleets is too costly under Aussie tax rules, say researchers from Griffith University and Monash University.
Their report, published today by the RACE for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre, proposes practical tax changes to support home charging and allow fleet managers to quickly adopt battery electric vehicles (BEVs).
“Some of our recommendations could be implemented right now,” says Griffith University tax law expert and lead researcher Dr Anna Mortimore.
“Because of the turnover of business fleets, these vehicles would start flowing into used car markets within three to four years, so more Australians could afford to go electric.”
An “Expansion-Tolerant” Architecture offers stability to ultra-high capacity Lithium-Sulfur battery
Mahdokht Shaibani, Monash University
A lithium sulfur battery that has four times the capacity than existing electric car batteries has been built and tested by researchers at Monash University, revealed in a paper published in Science Advances.
This would allow you to drive Melbourne to Sydney with
just one charge – driving the coastal route. A current edition prius would
require to stop in Albury-Wodonga to recharge.
New tech means cars can power houses, as well as the other way round.
Seyedfoad Taghizadeh, Macquarie University
A
new device turns electric vehicles into chargers for houses and stranded cars.
Researchers
led by Seyedfoad Taghizadeh from Australia’s Macquarie University are looking
to commercialise the technology, which may significantly increase the appeal of
the vehicles.
Widespread adoption of electric cars in New South Wales would increase demand on the power grid by an average of eight per cent, according to new research from the School of Engineering.
Sohaib Rafique and Professor Graham Town used data from the New South Wales Household Travel Survey to determine the demand that electric cars would place on the grid if they were used in 82 per cent of weekday and 81 per cent of weekend commutes, with trips less than 35km in length. Continue reading Would electric cars crash the grid?→
Lithium batteries have transformed power storage—from smartphones to electric cars and submarines. But like every battery their chemical composition changes through every charge cycle.
Lithium ions sitting in layers of graphite move between electrodes and change the oxidation state of, magnesium oxide, for example. The chemical rearrangements cause the graphite and oxide layers to physically expand and contract by up to 15 per cent at every cycle, cracking and detaching from the electrodes.
