V2G – vehicle to grid – has been exciting the minds of EV owners and technologists for many years but it has struggled to gain traction due to poor support from OEMs (car manufacturers).
As with many things in the EV industry, you can only benefit from V2G if you both own an EV and a driveway or garage where you can host a bidirectional solar-enabled charger.
Here at EVS 38 in Gothenburg, We Drive Solar is showcasing a different approach to V2G – fully commercialised AC V2G using publicly available car share vehicles linked to public V2G chargers.
Robin Berg, CEO of We Drive Solar, brought a Renault 5 and their own brand Solar Life wallbox. Berg highlighted that this was the result of 10 years of collaborative work with Renault and others; working not just on the technology but also on grid certification and safety standards to enable the cars and chargers to be installed and used in public.
The culmination of this effort is the launch of 50 Renault 5 vehicles in Utrecht. This will grow to 500 Renault 4, Renault 5, Megane and Scenic vehicles.
What is notable is that Didier Duruy, CTO of Renault’s software-defined vehicle business, Ampere, said that all Renault 5s are V2G capable, irrespective of trim level, meaning that V2G is not optional — it’s included.
Duruy also said that Renault are confident enough in their battery technology that they can include ‘intensive V2G use’ in the 8-year warranty on the Renault 5 battery.
The We Drive Solar system works by coordinating the needs of car share users with the needs of the grid. They use booking data from the MyWheels platform to determine when the car is needed.
Vehicle state is determined through the Last Mile Solutions Charge Station Management System (CSMS), which connects to the charger over OCPP 2.01 that in turn creates a secure connection to the vehicle using ISO 15118-20. We Drive Solar can then determine the charging profile using this data and electricity tariff data; tariffs are dynamic in the Netherlands.
Berg highlighted that the Netherlands has the most solar panels per capita in the world, so as you might expect, charging is prioritised during the day and discharging during the evening peak.
Car share represents an incredible potential energy storage resource — hundreds of vehicles, available to all and returning to a fixed location in neighbourhoods across Australia.
They can act as a solar soak during the day and return energy to residents and businesses in the evening. It’s an alternative to community batteries, not only providing a storage resource that benefits a whole community but enabling people to access cheap and convenient low-carbon mobility without the need to own an EV.
See also: Why can’t we make it here? The birth of one of world’s first EV industry gatherings
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