Fab­rice Loc­ment is a tenured uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and a research sci­en­tist at UTC’s Avenues research unit; he will become their Direc­tor in Jan­u­ary 2026. He was also direc­tor of the Urban Engi­neer­ing depart­ment. Ener­gy stor­age man­age­ment is one of his areas of research.

This is an issue he has been work­ing on for years. “On our scale, we approach this issue in two ways. With regard to sta­tion­ary bat­ter­ies, we are main­ly work­ing on lithi­um-ion tech­nolo­gies, although these tech­nolo­gies are also found in elec­tric vehi­cles, which can essen­tial­ly be likened to stor­age tanks. The study of V2H (Vehi­cle to Home), V2L (Vehi­cle to Load) and V2G (Vehi­cle to Grid) tech­nolo­gies, or bidi­rec­tion­al charg­ing, is anoth­er impor­tant area for us. Cur­rent­ly, apart from a few elec­tric cars that have recent­ly come onto the mar­ket, few vehi­cles are equipped with V2G, but this tech­nol­o­gy is like­ly to grow rapid­ly,” he says.

The Avenues Lab­o­ra­to­ry’s areas of research include elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty and micro-elec­tric­i­ty grids, as well as mod­el­ling to opti­mise the use of pho­to­volta­ic ener­gy. ‘The micro­grid con­sists of an ener­gy source, main­ly via pho­to­voltaics in cities, loads main­ly from build­ings and/or elec­tric vehi­cles, a con­nec­tion to the nation­al grid and sta­tion­ary back­up stor­age in case of need. Let’s take a sit­u­a­tion where the nation­al grid is con­gest­ed and the sun is shin­ing, so there is a lot of pho­to­volta­ic ener­gy avail­able, but no demand for pow­er from build­ings or vehi­cles. In this case, the sta­tion­ary bat­ter­ies are charged. The oppo­site sce­nario is also con­ceiv­able. The vehi­cle can be con­sid­ered as an ener­gy reser­voir and serve as a back­up source of elec­tric­i­ty for the home or even the nation­al grid in the event of peak con­sump­tion,’ he explains.

This issue has led to the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous strate­gies to opti­mise the oper­a­tion of both sta­tion­ary and on-board bat­ter­ies accord­ing to the sit­u­a­tions faced by the var­i­ous play­ers. What projects ar e cur­rent­ly under­way? “We are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Ade­me’s 4BLIFE project and, as part of this, are work­ing with sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Gus­tave-Eif­fel, LAAS, which is a CNRS lab­o­ra­to­ry spe­cial­is­ing in sys­tems analy­sis and archi­tec­ture at Paul- Sabati­er Uni­ver­si­ty, Toulouse and two indus­tri­al com­pa­nies, SIREA and BATCONNECT,” says Fab­rice Locment.

What are the objec­tives of this project? “Among oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions, it will involve devel­op­ing tools for mod­el­ling and char­ac­ter­is­ing bat­ter­ies in order to guar­an­tee high­ly reli­able sim­u­la­tion, pre­dic­tion and opti­mi­sa­tion con­di­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, one of the major chal­lenges is to study the age­ing of stor­age sys­tems, which can lead to a sig­nif­i­cant loss of effi­cien­cy, but also the poten­tial recov­ery of bat­ter­ies at the end of their oper­a­tional life-span. There are many ques­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing the loss of effi­cien­cy and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of giv­ing bat­ter­ies a sec­ond life,” he explains.

But when we talk about elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty, we are also talk­ing about vehi­cles and there­fore on-board bat­ter­ies that inter­act with their envi­ron­ment: the sta­tion­ary bat­tery, the nation­al grid, etc. A com­put­er sci­ence research engi­neer has there­fore recent­ly been recruit­ed to devel­op an intel­li­gent com­mu­ni­ca­tion inter­face between users and sys­tems. In con­crete terms? “The user arrives under the shade, scans the QR code on the ter­mi­nal with his/her smart­phone and has to answer sev­er­al ques­tions before con­nect­ing, such as the state of charge or the max­i­mum dura­tion of their pres­ence. By cross-ref­er­enc­ing these answers with the sun­shine fore­cast, the charge lev­el of the sta­tion­ary bat­ter­ies and the sta­tus of the nation­al grid, the intel­li­gent algo­rithm behind the inter­face will be able to plan the pow­er rat­ing to be usee and there­fore the ener­gy, in all ele­ments of the sys­tem while max­imis­ing the use of pho­to­volta­ic ener­gy. How­ev­er, we are still wait­ing for a V2G charg­ing sta­tion, a bidi­rec­tion­al charg­ing sta­tion, which will enable us to sig­nif­i­cant­ly advance our research into elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty,’ con­cludes Fab­rice Locment.

MSD