Electric vehicles can be used as storage units to stabilize the power grid. The “V2X Suisse” project is testing the bidirectional charging technology for the first time under real conditions.
Cars spend most of their time standing around – an average of 23 hours per day. It’s no different for e-vehicles. What if the batteries could make themselves useful during this time and feed electricity into the grid? Bidirectional charging makes this possible.
The e-car as a power bank – that’s the idea behind the Swiss pilot project “V2X Suisse.” It is the first large-scale test with bidirectionally charging series electric vehicles. For this, the car-sharing provider Mobility teamed up with the car manufacturer Honda, software and charging station developers, and the NGO novatlantis.
The project kicked off in September 2022, and since then 50 Honda E have been part of the Mobility fleet. The “energy storage on four wheels” will now be tested for a year. The e-cars feed up to 20 kilowatts back into the grid when they are not being driven. Scaled to the entire Mobility fleet, the bidirectional technology would thus offer a potential of 60 megawatts. That would be comparable to the output of a reservoir pumped-storage power plant.
The pilot project is intended to give bidirectional technology a boost. The goal is grid stabilization for both Swiss distribution grid operators and swissgrid, the national grid operator.
