Bidirectional cars are the latest innovation for the zero-carbon energy future. The bidirectionality refers to their capacity to supply energy out, in addition to taking energy in when being recharged. Bidirectional cars function like second batteries, providing benefits to households and the grid.
What are the benefits of bidirectional cars?
The bidirectionality function of electric vehicles (EVs) are set to make EVs more affordable. The innovation allows EVs owners to make more use of their cars’ electrical capacity.
Bidirectionality is especially relevant for high-end EVs from manufacturers like Tesla, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which can have a range exceeding 700km when fully charged. This range is obviously unnecessary for the day-to-day, and is also costly given the extra weight, but might still be valued by car owners for travelling interstate, for instance.
A bidirectionality function on these cars allows them to be used like a household battery. Smart meters can be used to program the car to charge when electricity is cheapest during peak solar hours in the middle of the day. The stored energy can then feed back into the household to run energy-intensive appliances when they required in the evening. The energy could also be sold back to the grid during such times when energy demand is highest.
Bidirectional cars are also being used to buffer electrical grids. The city of Utrecht in the Netherlands is setting up 10,000 bidirectional charging stations for the car-sharing company, MyWheels (the equivalent of Australia’s GoGet). The technology is also known as V2G, or vehicle-to-grid.
When they are all docked, mostly in the evening, the cars will provide approximately 100MW of additional stored power. This is already about one-third the size of Victoria’s Big Battery. Integrating bidirectional cars with the consumer market will provide even more benefits in terms of storage of renewable energy and deploying it on demand.
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