EVs use for emergency power recognised

Using EVs for emergency power in natural disasters has earned Nissan and 4R Energy a Best Resilience Award in the 2020 Japan Resilience Awards business and industry category.

The Association for Resilience Japan recognises the two companies’ efforts to promote electrification, including the use of EVs as emergency power sources under the Blue Switch project started by Nissan in May 2018.

It promotes EV use to address issues related to disaster prevention, energy management, climate change, tourism, and population declines.

More than eight million households in Japan have experienced power outages due to natural disasters in the past two years, the association says.

By the end of March, Nissan will have concluded 31 agreements with local governments and companies on EV use during and after natural disasters.

The agreements make EVs available for local communities and citizens to use as power sources at evacuation centres and welfare facilities in the event of outages caused by natural disasters.

This includes vehicles owned by local governments as well as ones used for car-sharing services and for test drives at Nissan dealerships.

4R Energy has developed a stationary battery by repurposing used 40kW/h batteries from Nissan Leafs.

The company, a joint venture between Nissan and Sumitomo Corp, has also developed a new product that allows customers to use electricity stored in EVs through vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology.

Trials to test operations using renewable energy stored in the stationary batteries have been held at select 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture since September.

The new V2X product, jointly developed by 4R Energy and IKS Co., will come to market by the end of the 2020 fiscal year.