What is Bidirectional Charging?
If you’re looking at buying an EV soon, there might be one important technology to add to your must-have list. There are many benefits to choosing an electric vehicle, including reducing emissions and lowering your transportation costs. For some parts of the country, bidirectional charging for electric vehicles might also keep the lights on at home.
What is Bidirectional Charging?
Most EVs, like any electric device, receive power in a single direction; power travels from the grid into the device. Unidirectional charging is the standard on most electric vehicles today, but that may change. At the heart of all EVs is a battery and a very big battery at that.
Bidirectional charging takes power stored in your EV and puts it back into the grid when needed. Electricity can move in both directions, which might allow overburdened electrical networks to draw on connected EVs to meet peaks in demand.
Why Aren’t All EVs Made with Bidirectional Charging?
The electrical current from the grid is generated as alternating current electricity or AC. It must be converted to direct current, or DC, to charge your battery or work in most electrical devices. This means that bidirectional chargers must include a DC-to-AC converter either in the charging device or in the vehicle itself. That costs money, and so far, neither EV manufacturers or EV charging station manufacturers have consistently invested in the technology to make it universal.
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Two Forms of Bi-Directional Charging
To date, experts envision two types of bidirectional charging that will allow cars to help power the future.
Vehicle-to-grid charging – VSG may not be viable until substantially more Americans adopt EVs, but it’s coming. Bidirectional V2G charging will allow the grid to optimize energy use based on demand, the time of day, current utility costs and even weather patterns. During periods of peak electricity usage, the grid could draw on stored energy in EV batteries to increase supply, lowering energy rates. The vehicles would then recharge during off-peak times.
Vehicle-to-home – V2H operates in much the same way as V2G but at the residential level. This would allow homes to use stored EV electricity to meet demand energy demands when rates are at their highest. When demand slows and rates decrease, the car automatically switches from being a power source to charging as it normally would.
Universal bidirectional charging may be a decade or so away, but most experts agree that the technology will be standard quite soon.
What EVs Currently Offer Bidirectional Charging?
Not many. As of Q4 2022, only the Nissan Leaf offers V2G charging, while the Ford F-150 Lightning offers V2H. The Nissan Leaf model year 2013 offers V2G with a specialized focus. Designed in partnership with Fermata Energy, the Leaf is meant to power commercial buildings as a part of a commercial delivery fleet, though Nissan is expected to add residential functionality soon.
It might be worth holding off making the switch to an EV until more models have bidirectional charging standard.
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