Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), a Taipei-based company whose battery-swapping stations serve drivers of electric scooters across Taiwan, on Tuesday said that it has converted about 20 percent of those stations into “virtual power plants” (VPPs) capable of sending spare electricity back to the grid.
Since it was founded in 2015, Gogoro has opened more than 12,000 stations with batteries that can be changed out on the fly, giving riders the ability to add dozens of kilometers of range without losing time on charging.
The company said that it has more than 500,000 monthly active users and more than 260 swaps taking place on its network every minute.
Photo: Annabelle Chih, Reuters
About 2,500 Gogoro stations have been converted into VPPs capable of storing up to 150 megawatt hours of electricity collectively — enough to power 500 local households for a month, it said.
“The Gogoro community is contributing to Taiwan’s net zero targets by helping to integrate more variable power generation resources onto the grid,” Gogoro founder and chief executive officer Horace Luke (陸學森) said in a statement.
About 80 percent of Taiwan’s power supply relies on fossil fuels, but the nation has pledged to zero out its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
By tapping into the power of its parked batteries, Gogoro joins a growing number of companies exploring VPPs, which can help utilities avoid blackouts during high demand and reduce the need for electricity generated by fossil fuels.
Additionally, companies selling excess power back to the grid through VPPs can realize a new revenue stream.
Under the same announcement, Gogoro said it would participate in a program introduced by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) under which the battery-swapping stations would temporarily disconnect from grids if there is critical energy demand elsewhere. The stations can operate for up to 65 hours powered by their own batteries.
Taipower pays a premium for companies to participate in the program, which helps ensure overall grid stability.
Adding more renewable energy to the mix would require solutions for absorbing excess power during particularly windy days, for example, or doling out stored energy when clouds lower solar output.
The global market for VPPs hit US$1.9 billion last year, The Business Research Co consultancy said.
The industry is on track to grow more than 20 percent this year.
That potential has already lured electric vehicle (EV) giants. Tesla Inc is turning some houses in Texas that use its home batteries into VPPs, while Nio Inc (蔚來汽車), a leading EV manufacturer in China, is touting its own battery-swapping stations as a source of power supply and storage.
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