Becoming an EV owner unlocks much more than the promise of a greener lifestyle. They can make money from their EV with bidirectional EV charging, among other exciting benefits. Have you heard of bidirectional EV chargers and are interested in getting one for your EV but are still not quite convinced about what they do? This is a frequent experience all EV owners face when entering into the charging environment. You Googled for some answers and next thing you know you’re drowning in technical jargon, This article is your guiding light: it’ll provide some context as to what bidirectional EV charging is and how it works. Then we’ll detail what we hope are the actual benefits that it can provide you, as an EV owner.
First of all, What is Bidirectional Charging and How does it Work?
Bidirectional EV charging is exactly what it sounds like: EV charging that travels two directions. With unidirectional (one-way) EV chargers, electricity comes from the electric grid into the electric vehicle, while bidirectional (two-way) EV chargers allow electricity to flow both ways.
But how does this work? Well, that happens when an EV is plugged in and charged: AC (alternating current) electricity from the grid is converted to DC (direct current) electricity, the type a car can use.
This conversion is done by either the car’s own converter or a converter in the charger itself. Then, when you want to access that stored energy in the EV’s battery for a house or export it back through the grid, the DC electricity that’s used in the car now logically needs to return to AC electricity.
While bidirectional EV chargers are still quite rare, all of them have internal converters. This means they can do the electrical conversion back from DC to AC. They can also manage the amount of power flowing between the battery and external power.
Secondly, a Common Question: Bidirectional Charging vs Smart Charging, What Are The Differences?
Smart charging means any type of EV charging (uni or bidirectional) in which the charging time and/or rate is controlled by a “smart” (as opposed to a manual on/off switch) software device. This happens via data connections between the EV and the charger.
Take Smart EV charging apps for example, which provide the ability to control your EV charge times directly from your mobile. With smart charging, cars can be plugged in, but they don’t need to be actually charging the entire time.
Instead, individual EV owners, or energy firms, can choose the most productive time to charge up energy in terms of cost and demand, depending on the nation and the energy operator.
At times, this may offer economic advantages for clients. For example, a lot of energy companies may offer preferential rates to charge during the night. It also prevents situations where a majority of electric vehicle owners charge at once and overload the energy supply grid.
What Is Two-way or Bidirectional Charging Used For?
Bidirectional charging means that energy can flow both in and out of your car. But where does the energy actually go when it’s flowing out of your car?
V2G: Vehicle to Grid
V2G is when you use a bidirectional EV charger to supply power (electricity) from an EV car’s battery to the grid utilizing a DC to AC converter system that is normally integrated into the EV charger. Smart charging enabled via V2G can be used to mitigate and balance power distributions and settle local, regional or national energy needs.
It enables EVs to charge during off-peak hours and return energy back to the grid at peak hours when there’s additional energy demand.
Which makes plenty of sense: most of the time, cars are parked in parking spots 95 percent of the time, so with proper planning (and the right infrastructure in place), parked and plugged-in EVs can serve en masse as a sort of power banks, stabilizing future electric grids.
Therefore, EVs can indeed be perceived as large batteries on wheels that assist in ensuring that sufficient energy is available to every consumer or business at the same time.
V2H: Vehicle to Home
V2H is the use of a bidirectional EV charger to send power (electricity) from an EV Car’s battery to a home (or perhaps another building type). This is done through a DC to AC conversion system typically integrated into the EV charger.
Like V2G, V2H can also contribute to balancing and have a settlement function, for local or even national supply grids on a larger scale.
For example, by charging up your EV at night when demand for electricity is lower, and then using that electricity to empower your homes during daylight hours, you could in fact reduce consumption during peak times when demand for electricity is at its highest and when there is more pressure on the grid.
V2H can therefore help ensure that our homes have enough energy when they need it most. That can also relieve pressure on the electricity grid as a whole.
As we have a fully renewable energy system, V2G and V2H may become more important. As each form of renewable energy produces varying amounts of energy at different times of the day or year. For example, solar panels obviously harvest more energy during the day, wind turbines when it is windy and so forth. Bidirectional charging also allows EV battery storage to be utilized to its fullest potential to the benefit of the entire energy system — and even the planet!
Put another way, EVs can be deployed for renewable load-kinding: absorbing and buffering surplus solar or wind generation when it’s produced to then deliver that energy for use whenever demand is elevated, or energy generation is below-average.
Pros of Bidirectional Charging
1.Get Paid for Supplying Energy to the Electric Grid
As an EV owner with bidirectional EV charging, you can therefore literally earn money from your car by selling excess energy from your EV’s battery back to the grid.
Any energy captured and stored in your EV’s battery can be sold back to the grid; whether that energy comes from your own energy source, in the form of your roof’s photovoltaic cells, from renewable load following, from your home’s source of power, or from your local supermarket charger.
In countries where energy prices track throughout the day (like Spain) or where energy companies offer preferential off-peak charging tariffs (like the UK), EV owners can earn even more money by providing cheaper charging to the grid during non-peak times and selling energy back during peak times.
Early estimates for potential income an EV could deliver its owner via V2G hover around €400 a year.
The average estimated financial benefit for an EV owner and potential V2G use over the EV lifetime comes out to approximately €3700. And if you participate in frequency regulation, you might make even more.
In one example, Nuuve Corporation is currently running Denmark’s leading pilot program for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology with 30 electric vehicles targeting the frequency regulation market, and estimates EV owners will make as much as € 9,000 throughout the lifetime of a single car.
2.Save Money
It is already much less expensive to own an EV than one of their fossil-fuel guzzling rivals. According to Canadian Ingrid Malmgren this can save around €5000 throughout the life of the vehicle. If you have a bidirectional charger rather than a unidirectional charger, and you live in a country where energy prices vary by time of day, you could save on electric car charging even more.
In some countries — Spain, for example — if you charge your vehicle overnight, when electrical demand is low, then you’ll pay less than you would during peak daytime hours.
To further sweeten the deal, very often energy companies and national governments actually offer incentives (aka price cuts) for EV drivers to do their charging (even) during off-peak hours, thus making the electricity even cheaper!
Sure enough, some energy companies are currently marketing off-peak, or “differential”, energy tariffs to EV owners, in which you might pay normal rates during the day, but for a set number of hours at night you will be charged at a much cheaper rate. It is a method to help balance the grid and ensure that not all EVs charge during peak demand hours.
If you then use this electricity — stored in your EV — to run your house throughout the day, you get to use much cheaper energy than you would normally pay for during those hours. In big lies, that will only mean significant cuts to your electricity bill over time.
3.Become Energy Self-Sufficient
If you combine bi-directional EV charging with your own renewable energy power source, you’ll have a chance to achieve energy self-sufficiency. Consider this: if you have a batch of solar panels on your roof which can power your home throughout the day, any extra power produced can be fed into your electric vehicle (EV) and consumed at night, or the next day at home, or when you’re driving.
A few countries are implementing programs and incentives to make it easier for individuals to do just that. The United Kingdom’s demand-side response (DSR) scheme, for instance, provides homes with smart meters and allows them to install their own renewable energy systems, such as wind and solar photovoltaic. It also allows them to return surplus energy to the grid. Supported by such schemes, and other EV and EV charging incentives, available across Europe, your home could soon become its own little micro-power station!
This happens not just on the level of individual houses, but even of apartment blocks and communities. The issue of apartment block charging being a problem for various reasons (83% of house owners say that they charge at home, while only 13% of apartment block residents claim to do this) may well change with energy self-sufficiency coming to help solve the issue, storing energy between residents in a more centrally-networked fashion.
For example, the Brooklyn Micro-grid, an energy marketplace based out of New York for locally produced renewable resident-derived energy.
Sure enough, others that want to create energy in a pod of like-minded folks might still leverage EVs to store and sell energy back to their micro-grid.
In this way bidirectional charging could be a potentially central part of community champions renewable energy generation schemes which look to communitarian energy resource between members within a context of self-sufficiency, not just one domicile.
Conclusion: Future-Proofing Before It’s Too Late
Only now has the technology gone bidirectional (allowing electricity to flow into and out of EVs), just as those capabilities have reached a point where more of us can access it. With the passage of time, the tech will improve, and so will its possibilities. No EV owner should be without a bidirectional charger. From earning supplemental income by selling grid power back to grid power to becoming energy self-sufficient – bidirectionality pays!
If you think the bidirectional charger is suitable for you, LUXMANENERGY is also continuously developing new cost-effective bidirectional chargers. Please continue to follow us and get in touch with our charging expert Jack!
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