Denmark to combine wind power with vehicle-to-grid in new tests

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Denmark is one of the countries on the leading edge of pushing vehicle electrification. They were one of the first countries to hook up with Better Place to roll out a charging infrastructure. Now, the Danes want to do a test that combines wind power and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. While wind power is a tremendous renewable resource, the wind often stops blowing. Thus some mechanism is needed to store energy when the wind blows and feeds it back it out when it stops.

That's where the V2G comes in. Electric vehicles could be used as a temporary buffer during calm air periods. Denmark plans a V2G test on the island of Bornholm, a place that already has enough wind turbine capacity to meet 40 percent of its electricity needs, but only gets 20 percent of its power from wind because of inconsistency. Denmark will use plug-in vehicles to evaluate whether capacity utilization of wind power can be improved by feeding power from the cars back into the grid. If the project is successful, more wind turbines will be added with the goal of getting half of Bornholm's power needs from the wind. Thanks to Mart for the tip!