The cash-back car will play a key role in vehicle-to-grid implementation in the USA, allowing electric vehicle owners to earn potentially $1,000 a year, or net about $440 after paying for charging. EV owners could sell energy service called frequency regulation to the grid from their parked electric vehicle’s batteries. A smart grid needs short-, medium-, and longer-term storage to run smoothly, and EV batteries will meet the short-term need, a process called frequency regulation.

A company called NRG owns the U.S. license to a proprietary aggregator technology from the University of Delaware that interfaces between individuals and energy wholesalers. University of Delaware professor Willett Kempton sold the international license to Copenhagen-based Nuvve as well.  Kempton is incorporating a subsidiary company that will hold the license and will be called eV2g.
Traditionally we’ve been a power generator,” said Denise Wilson, president of alternative energy services, NRG. “But in last couple of years, we’ve really moved into the smart energy solutions area. We also have an EV group that’s … really done a lot in the EV space.”
The RTOs and ISOs aren’t equipped now to manage power from individual cars. So for cars to play, they have to aggregate. That’s what the eV2G software will do.
On average 500 kilowatts production is necessary to be registered as a generator, although it may revise that down to 100 kilowatts in the near future. So,  electric vehicles have to be bundled together to be capable of earning payment. Collected payment from the grid operator is passed on to EV owners for making their vehicles available.
“One hundred kilowatts would require about 15 cars, some offline and some driving. What we’re looking at is now taking this to scale with a conventional commercial fleet so we can show that it actually operates,”,” said Kempton. Denise Wilson, NRG  CAO said the company will announce pilot partnerships with company fleets, and it will take 2 years to achieve full scale on the fleet side and then offer the service to regular car owners.
“Frequency regulation is very short periods of charging and discharging which will have very little impact on the general state of charge of the battery,” said Nathaniel Pearre who works with Dr. Kempton. “We have spoken with several [manufacturers] who have looked at our duty cycle and said, ‘Well, that’s not going to have any effect at all,’” said Pearre. Of course, those comments “certainly were not indicative of a warranty policy,” he said.
EVs currently on the market, including the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, are not yet equipped to send power back to the grid. To do that, they would need a bi-directional power electronics unit.
“We all know car companies are a little bit like giant ships: it takes them a long time to change direction,” said Pearre. “There’s a lot of talk about vehicle-to-grid and integrating electric vehicles, and the new bold, bright future. But getting that to be boots on the ground is something that we’re really going to have to wait and see what they do.”
“we’re working with the OEMs and suppliers to get them to understand this is going to be a competitive advantage for them and for the EV owner to install bi-directional power electronics units in their cars— It’s going to be an option that you’d offer on a vehicle, like Bluetooth. People are going to want this,” said Wilson.
The energy regulation market in the United States today is $1.5 billion and is expected to double by 2020. The EV markethas already taking off. Wilson cites projections of 1 million EVs by the end of 2015 on the streets in the US.
“We see this as next logical step toward creating what we consider a fully integrated clean energy ecosystem as it relates to the whole EV car revolution,” said Wilson.

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