Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why Bidirectional EV Charging is a Big Deal”.
Earlier this year, a California bill was introduced that would require all electric cars sold in the state feature bidirectional charging by 2027. Now months later, that bill was gutted but not before. It sparked a whole lot of discussion amongst experts and legislators. Big promises from automakers to support the technology and questions from consumers like you, not the least of which is what the heck is bidirectional charging, and why should you care simply put bidirectional charging? Is the ability to pull the energy in your ev’s battery back out through the charging port, so you can use it outside of the vehicle, but before I can dig into how that works? Let’S talk a little bit about how regular EV charging happens. You see the cable that comes out of the wall, isn’t actually your ev’s charger.
The real charging Hardware lives deep down in here in your car’s electronic guts, where it acts as a rectifier converting the alternating current that comes through the grid and out of the wall into direct current that your ev’s battery can store. However, most Electric car vehicle Motors use alternating current to move the wheel. So you need that Hardware to also act as an inverter to convert the DC energy back into chug chug, alternating current, to turn the wheels. But what? If, instead of sending that power to the motors, the EV just sends it back out of the charging port, that’s bidirectional charging where power flows in two directions through the charging port and an EV that features this capability can be used to power.
Well, a whole variety of things. Now there are a couple of different flavor of bir directional charging, with the most basic being vehicle to load. Usually what you get is an adapter like this v, l adapter that comes with our long-term Kia ev6. You plug this into the charging port and, on the other end, you’ve got a standard, 120 volt house type Outlet. You can just plug pretty much whatever you want into there from appliances to camping gear heck. You can plug a charging cable in and charge a whole other EV, though it’s going to be a pretty slow charge. Some EVS like Ford’s F-150, Lightning or GM’s upcoming ulum platform. Electric trucks can output up to 240 volts, allowing them to power even heavier gear.
The next step is vehicle to home or V to H or vehicle to building in the case of commercial buildings. These are more rare here in the states and much more expensive to implement, but a few early pilot programs allow an EV to connect directly to a home central power box, where the house can draw energy from the battery pack to power every room in the building. For up to a week, depending on your energy use and the size of your ev’s battery vehicle to grid is the final frontier requiring deep integration with local utilities. But this Tech allows an EV to send energy outside of the home to the Grid in an emergency or to sell excess stored energy back to the grid.
During times of peak use, one of the best potential vehicle to grid uses I’ve seen are electric school buses which could use their big batteries while sitting idle during morning and afternoon routes to Power, School houses or reduce brown outs during Peak evening draw cheerleaders for bu Directional charging sight all sorts of advantages to the tech, from the ability to power, a campsite, work, site or tail gate party. Wherever you happen to be parked to adding energy security to your home in an area prone to blackouts and brown outs heck, it doesn’t even cost that much to add the technology to the car, because most of the hardware is already built in bidirectional. Charging can also save you money working as an energy buffer between your home and a rooftop solar installation or allowing Frugal homeowners to shift their energy usage, drawing and storing power from the grid during cheap off peak hours to be used again when rates climb later a Sort of by low use high energy Market right there in your garage, of course, the technology isn’t without its drawbacks. For starters, vehicle to home only works when your vehicle is connected to your home. So if you have to go to work during a blackout, well, you could be leaving your family in the dark. Also, currently, it’s very expensive to get your home ready to accept energy from your car’s battery, often times the price Rivals, that of stationary Power Solutions like Tesla’s power wall and finally, there aren’t that many cars in America that support bidirectional charging and the ones that do Are pretty much limited to vehicle to load party tricks, though that could change as more automakers get on board with the tech, so there you go a quick primer into bir directional charging, how it works and what it can do for you.
If you’re still curious, we’ve got even deeper dives into EV charging Tech, both uni and bidirectional over on cet.com, as well as a running list of the best EVS that feature the tech .