How to Access Market Readiness

Over the course so far we’ve talked about V2G  as a technology and some of its applications   in this step we want to discuss how to assess  market readiness. To do this I’m going to be   speaking to one of the other trainers for this  course Chris Cox, Head of Energy Systems and   Infrastructure at Cenex. So Chris to begin  with what do we mean by market readiness?  So quite simply it’s a way of methodically  analyzing a market or an opportunity to understand   its openness to a certain technology and  how that technology might flourish otherwise.   Okay so that explains what it is but what benefit  does it give?

So if we understand the readiness of   a market then we can pick the right market to  focus technology first it doesn’t guarantee   success of the technology but it gives you  its greatest chance of success helps it find   its biggest audience for example or the the  area where there’s the most political dialogues.  so we tend to consider things like policy we might  look at whether competing technologies within that   market or other barriers or opportunities like  that. So that all makes sense but how do you do   that for V2G?

So from V2G there’s really four  main metrics that we think about the first is   the overall size of the vehicle parc by vehicle  parc they just mean the number of cars or vans   whatever vehicle it is you’re looking at within  that country or region we then look at the   rate of adoption of electric vehicles so actually  how quickly are those vehicles transitioning to   electric and how many electric vehicles   are there now in the market of course you can’t   talk about electric vehicles without talking  about infrastructure and that’s the third metric   sort of roll out so far of electric  vehicle infrastructure within that region

and then finally we look at flexibility  markets so it’s often called demand response   but we’re looking at really is it possible to use   flexibility from something  like V2G to provide services within an energy market.

So does this apply to just a country level  market or can you use this in other ways as well? So you can use it within any market really and  the value is to use it to to identify and to   rank those those markets and those opportunities  if you look at something that’s not a country   so something like commercial  vans for example you could take that as a market   globally rather than just within a country and so  you could look at well what’s the total vehicle   path what’s the total number of commercial  vans that are out there across the world   you can then look at the conversion rate to  electric vehicles so how quickly are they   being adopted and how many electric vehicles  are there within that commercial band market   taking the next step you can look at what kind  of charging commercial bands would need and   from that you can start to see where whether the  existing infrastructure whether depot charging or   public charging whether that’s the right kind  of infrastructure and how much there is of it   out there and then finally again V2G really  relies on doing something with the flexibility   so you’ve got to have an opportunity  to use that flexibility to do something   so the commercial van it might be that you’ve got  the ability to connect to a building and provide   energy back to the building or there might be  other applications like that so it gives you   that way to work through and really understand the  market and compare quite methodically one market   with another.

So now I understand your approach. Can  you tell me where the best markets are for V2G now? So historically the best market for V2G has really  been across there’s been a lot of investments   in R&D in the area and you’ve got a lot of the  vehicle manufacturers centralized around that   region so there’s been a lot of opportunity  there and there’s also been a lot of reform   around the energy markets meaning that you’ve  got more opportunity to trade flexibility   however as we go forwards there’s  some real emerging opportunities   and countries such as Japan and China and South  Korea are really showing promise as future markets.   Is there anything else that you look at when  evaluating the market?

Definitely, so you need to   look at the the readiness of the market but there  can also be real barriers that just mean that even   though it looks good you just you just can’t  operate there so that might be your political   barriers that mean that your technology’s unknown  it might be that there’s an enough competitor   who has already saturated that market or a  certain technology that means that V2G isn’t very   applicable. We’re going to talk a bit  more about some of these different barriers   in the next few steps so we can understand  them. Thank you very much Chris Cox