Gogoro, the micro-mobility company based in Taiwan, has joined forces with Enel X, an Italian energy company, to create a virtual power plant (VPP) that combines thousands of battery swapping stations. The VPP is already up and running with 1,300 of Gogoro’s “GoStations” included in the network, and another 1,200 scheduled for deployment soon. By mid-2023, the VPP is expected to include all 2,500 stations in Taiwan, and the stored batteries will help balance the grid by either adding or receiving excess energy.
According to Horace Luke, CEO of Gogoro, “time-shifting energy was key to enabling the sustainable transformation of energy and transportation”. The rollout of the VPP, he said, was “the first time this technology has been deployed this way in the world, and it creates a new Gogoro revenue stream beyond mobility.
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The VPP pilot in Taiwan, completed in 2022, showed that the Gogoro network could safely pause charging if there was a grid imbalance or provide energy back to the grid as demand required. Once the demand subsided, the VPP sent a signal to the network to restore grid consumption. Enel X’s platform aggregates “thousands of these ‘new energy’ assets into a resource that can help balance the intermittency of large-scale renewable power stations,” said Jeff Renaud, Head of Enel X Asia and Oceania. Gogoro adds that these vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operations were performed without causing interruptions to customers coming to swap their e-scooter batteries.
The Taiwan Power Company (TPC) is on board as the grid operator. Its president Yao-Ting Wang said Enel and Gogoro contributed to TPC’s Energy Trading Platform, which would allow “organizations like Gogoro to be active contributors of energy in Taiwan and we encourage more businesses to participate through professional aggregators like Enel X, to work together towards Taiwan’s renewable energy future.
Enel’s Renaud added that “as new distributed resources are built to electrify and decarbonize our energy use, VPPs will unlock greater sustainability impacts and improved financial returns by connecting these assets to the broader energy system.
Gogoro is an electric scooter manufacturer founded in Taiwan in 2011. The company is also known for its sharing services and early rollout of battery swapping stations. In addition to Taiwan, the company is expanding into India and China and recently completed an IPO in the United States. The partnership with Enel X is another step towards Gogoro’s goal of revolutionizing sustainable transportation and energy systems.
