Electric Vehicles

While an electric vehicle is sitting idle in a garage or parking lot, its battery could still be hard at work feeding energy to homes or the power grid.

It really just makes that battery useful in another way – to add some resiliency to your building, add another energy source, and also an economic stream for you.

Rachel Ackerman, of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center explains that so-called bidirectional chargers allow energy to flow between an EV battery and the grid – in both directions.

The battery can charge when demand for energy is low and rates are cheap, like in the middle of the night. That energy can then be fed back to the grid at times when demand – and rates – are high. That could save homeowners money – and help utilities avoid the need to turn on backup power plants to meet peak demand.

In Massachusetts, Ackerman’s group is leading a pilot project that will install 100 free bidirectional chargers for electric cars, school buses, and trucks. The goal is to identify and resolve any barriers to deploying the technology on a larger scale. So consumers and utilities across the country can make fuller use of EV batteries.