The growing share of renewable energy requires high capability and capacity of the grid to buffer its fluctuation, in addition to the dynamic and real time changes in the demand side. Several options of energy storages are currently available, including battery, super/ultra capacitor, pumped hydro, compressed air, fly wheel, and other chemical energy storages (hydrogen, methanol, ammonia). Grid balancing can be carried out by adopting those energy storages, introducing new power generators, and changing the operation rate of the in-operation power generators. Grid balancing is strongly related to the power quality market rather than the power quantity market, due to the its required characteristics of capacity availability and response time.

Several grid ancillary services are available, e.g. frequency regulation, voltage regulation, congestion mitigation, spinning reserve, and storage. In addition, this services are available in different levels of transmission, distribution, and local grid (such as renewable energy). Furthermore, they can also be mapped to different levels of response time. Fly wheel, super/ultra capacitor, and battery are considered as very responsive energy storages, therefore, they can provide primary frequency regulation service which occurs in period of seconds to several minutes. As this is power quality service, practically, the price of the power supplied and absorbed generally doesn’t follow the regular tariff for power quantity service.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are believed to increase in the future. However, their high penetration potentially leads to high stress on an electrical grid. This occurs especially when the supply cannot cover and actively respond to the unpredictable demand caused by charging EVs. For Indonesian case, the capability and capacity of the grid (including Jamali) to balance its supply and demand is very limited. Coordinated charging and ancillary services using EVs through vehicle-to-grid (V2G) become very crucial technology in the future in order to balance the grid, as well as creating a new market sector.

According to the techno-economic analysis of V2G system in Indonesian grid, by utilizing EVs through V2G, the supply during peak hours can be reduced by up to 2.8% (for coal) and 8.8% (for gas). EVs owned by business entities as operating vehicles with a natural tariff show the highest feasibility for ancillary services, and can potentially reduce the cost of charging by up to 60.15%. From a power company perspective, V2G also potentially improves annual revenue by approximately 3.65%, owing to the replacement of the fuel.

The full report can be accessed from

Huda, M.; Koji, T.; Aziz, M. Techno Economic Analysis of Vehicle to Grid (V2G) Integration as Distributed Energy Resources in Indonesia Power System. Energies 2020, 13, 1162.