Dr. Ziad Salameh

Professor
University of Massachusetts Lowell

USA

Abstract:

Electric power system in today’s world is on the verge of a significant transformation. For the past few years or so, “Smart grid” has been one of the hottest topics in the national news and professional conferences in the electric power industry. The next-generation of electricity grids, known as “smart” or “intelligent,” is expected to accommodate all generation and storage options.
With sky rocketing oil prices, depleting oil reserves and environmental global warming, the world as a whole is forced to really consider using electric vehicles as part of the solution, they serve as distributed moving energy storage.
The concept of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology emerges to optimize the potential of all of these newly found all electric and hybrid-electric vehicles in use by the general consumer. Vehicle to grid technology, or simply V2G, is the practice of the customer selling power back to the electrical company.  A customer of the electrical company can take his electric vehicle and plug it into the grid and send power back to the electrical company during peak demand at a high price and charge his car during off peak demand at low price, thus making profit of his electric vehicle.
The benefits of the V2G technology is very clear. It is very efficient in the sense that a sitting car can become a power source for the electrical company. This way, during peak hours of demand, the electrical company can use customer’s cars to help service their electrical grid’s demands. Thus, creating less demand and stress on other areas of the electrical company’s grid system. The car’s battery ultimately acts as an energy storage system for the electrical company so that they can buy back energy from you whenever they want to. Ideally, the electrical company will implement the idea of valley shaving, charging at night when demand is low, and peak shaving, sending power back to the grid when demand is high.  The vehicle to grid program can help stabilize the grid and improve utility operation. Use of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) plug-in electric vehicles can be considered as partial solutions to the global energy crisis at present. A note of importance is that with so many more cars used as generators, the electrical company could build less coal and resource depleting power sources as back up power systems.
At the core of V2G is a reversible battery charger for electric vehicles with a V2G function and associated control strategy for the power flowing between the grid and the EV. The reversible battery charger is to connect the power grid and EV battery. It essentially requires some form of a power interface between the electric vehicle (EV) and the grid. In contrast to a ‘hard wire’ power interface, a user-friendly and secure ‘wireless or contactless’ power interfaces with no physical contacts are preferable.
Electric vehicle technologies available today are normally divided into three types. They are all electric vehicle (AEV), regular and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), and Fuel Cell electric vehicles (FCEV). AEV runs on an electric motor.  These are powered by a large size battery bank, it is the most suited for V2G concept. Regular HEV, on the other hand, has both motor powered by small battery size bank and an internal combustion engine (ICE). The batteries are only charged by the generator in the car, so it cannot be plugged to the grid and hence not suitable for V2G. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle PHEV is the same as a regular (HEV) but can be plugged to the grid, so, it is also suitable for V2G concept. Fuel Cell electric vehicle runs on an electric motor as all- EV. However, the difference is that FCEVs produce their primary electricity using fuel cells which in turn are powered by hydrogen. This is not suited for V2G without some modifications.
Current generation of batteries can only store energy to drive 50 to 150 miles on a single charge compared to that of an ICE vehicle which can drive 300- 500 miles with a full tank. Most potential battery manufacturers are looking at lithium ion batteries because they have the best balance between cost and performance. And the USABC are investigating two systems, lithium polymer and the lithium-ion battery systems.
Last but not least is the two-way communication system between the EV and the grid that carries all the information—it acts as the “brain.” It serves as the basis for the V2G system to work efficiently and effectively. Data (such as the battery state of charge, EV position, time, distance for next trip, ..., etc.) from the EV is periodically and wirelessly transferred to a server which holds a data  base of a cluster of EVs, in the same data base, data from the grid suppliers ( such as tariffs for sold or bought energy, available energy, ..., etc.)  is regularly updated. These data are accessible to the EV users through a web interface. Based on this information, the EV user can optimize the cost and whether to charge or discharge.  

In this Tutorial, we will discuss all of the above concepts and pay attention to the communication part of this system. This Tutorial will be beneficial to all computer and electrical Engineers as well as regular attendees. We will clarify methods on how to deal with these systems as well as we will discuss many new research ideas that will benefit all conference attendees.

Dr. Salameh got his Diploma (with honors) from Russia in 1974 and his M.Sc. and Ph.D from University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1980 and 1982 respectively.
Dr. Ziyad Salameh is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell since 1985; he chaired the ECE Department for three years 2001-2004.
Dr. Salameh has technical expertise in a wide area of renewable energy subjects, especially in the area of residential hybrid wind/photovoltaic systems, storage batteries, fuel cells, super capacitors ,electric vehicle technologies and vehicle to grid (V2G) tecnology. Dr. Salameh has been a co-investigator and principal investigator of many DOE, state, and utility projects.
Professor Salameh has published more than 120 papers in renewable energy systems and electric vehicle technologies.
Dr Salameh is an associate editor of the International Journal of Power and Energy systems, and the International Journal of renewable Energy
Dr. Salameh is member of IEEE Renewable Technologies Subcommittee ,
IEEE Emerging Technologies coordinating Committee ETCC, and
IEEE  Distributed Generation and  Energy Storage Subcommittee
Dr. Salameh is the director of the center for Electric Car and Energy Conversion (EC&EC) with four research laboratories: Renewable Energy Lab, Battery Evaluation Lab, Power Electronics Lab, and Electric Vehicle Lab. The renewable energy lab hosts four wind turbines 2400w, 1500w, 500w, and 300w. Moreover it has two PV systems 2500 w and 10.5 kw and 1.2 kw PEM fuel cell, also it has a super Capacitor evaluation station. Dr. Salameh has been driving an electric car since 1994, the EC&EC center has 10 electric cars for research and education.
Dr. Salameh supervised 7 Ph.D Dissertations and 34 master thesises
Dr. Salameh is the author of a book “Renewable Energy systems Analysis and Design” to be published  by Elsevier,ISBN:0123749913, EAN: 9780123749918
 Invited to conferences:
Invited Speaker to the 13th IEEE Saudi Technical Exchange Meeting, held in Dhahran, April  29-30, 2008
invited speaker, and gave a tutorial session  at the 5th IEEE GCC in Kuwait, March 17-10, 2009        
Invited speaker at IDTechEx,  [Global Research and Analysis on Electric Vehicle Future] conference, Cambridge, MA, Nov 18th, 2010
. Panelist at the IEEE PES GM2010, Minneapolis July26-29th on two topics:
Building Integrated Wind Energy Conversion Systems
Small Scale Distributed Generation Systems

  Panelist at the Electric Vehicle Summit and Workshop, Lowell, MA, Oct. 6,          2010.