Electric vehicles used as part of the response to a nuclear power plant outage in Finland

Electric vehicles were used as a part of the response as Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Finland suffered an unexpected outage on Sunday, 19 November.

EV charging provides a significant and rapidly growing opportunity to help power systems cope with disturbances. Virta Ltd is already a registered independent demand response aggregator to the Finnish transmission system operator Fingrid Oyj.

The Powered by Virta EV charging network can automatically respond to rapid and unexpected disturbances in the power grid. Such a response was activated on 19 November in Finland when the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant was unexpectedly disconnected from the grid due to a turbine fault.

The charging power of charging events on AC chargers around Finland was reduced within 5 seconds for one minute due to the observed dip in grid frequency. This reaction, in combination with other fast flexible resources, such as battery systems and disconnectable loads, gives time for other energy production to compensate for the disconnected power plant.

Read the news (in Finnish) here