- Multinational energy firm, E.ON, has been running its ‘Bi-clEVer’ pilot project since 2022, exploring the real-world application of bidirectional EV charging – with the hope of improving sustainability, while reducing costs and energy dependency.
- With the firm now publishing the key insights from its partners in the trial, the potential benefits of mass adoption of bidirectional charging have been published by E.ON.
- The headline figure is a possible energy cost saving of €920 per year, by utilising both vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid applications.
E.ON’s bidirectional charging pilot shows significant cost savings
The total estimated savings of €920 per year come from two factors. €420 of this comes from maximising the use of solar panels, and using a vehicle-to-home tariff. The other €500 worth of savings comes from ‘automated energy trading’, which is possible with the vehicle-to-grid component. Beyond E.ON’s pilot scheme, V2G can even have the possibility of making home free-of-charge, as energy firm Octopus Energy recently outlined.
The scheme doesn’t just bring cost savings, but also helps increase energy self-sufficiency. A bidirectional EV setup, combined with a solar setup, can make the average home 51% energy independent. That figure increased to 59%, when a standalone battery energy storage system was also brought into the mix.
Following on from this ‘Bi-clEVer’ project, E.ON has also participated in similar bidirectional charging projects, such as the newer BDL Next project, which will further explore the opportunity of the technology, by focusing more specifically on the technological and regulatory hurdles that will need to be overcome, for bidirectional charging to become second nature in home EV charging.
Jens Michael Peters, Managing Director for Energy Solutions and Electromobility at E.ON Energie Deutschland, commented:
“In the future, trading in electricity from electric cars could also generate income of up to 500 euros a year. We are working towards users buying energy in times of particularly low electricity prices and storing it in their electric cars in order to sell it at a later date and feed it back into the grid at the right time – this process is automated. In this way, electric car drivers provide the market and the grid with valuable flexibility by providing sustainably generated energy when less of it is available on the market
