Bidirectional Charging (V2G, V2H & V2L) Explained: All You Need To Know!

Powering your home with electricity from your EV - sounds brilliant, doesn’t it? No wonder bidirectional charging is such a hot topic right now. But if you start researching, or you try to find cars and chargers that actually support it, you’ll quickly hit a wall. So why is that? Which challenges are still waiting to be solved? And how can you prepare for this technology in the meantime? That’s exactly what we cover in this video.

▬ Video Content ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
00:00 - 00:32: Intro - Bidirectional Charging
00:33 - 01:16: What is bidirectional charging?
01:17 - 02:08: Vehicle-to-Load (V2L)
02:09 - 03:41: Vehicle-to-Home (V2H)
03:42 - 07:23: Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G)
07:24 - 08:56: go-e Charger
08:57 - 09:13: Outro

▬ Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Vehicle-to-Load is currently the most developed technology, and it’s already integrated in some cars, such as the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and 6, or the current Kia Niro. With Vehicle-to-Load, you can use electricity from your EV battery to power small devices like smartphones. With a fully charged battery, you can even get up to 3.6 kW of output.

▬ Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
With Vehicle-to-Home, your electric car can supply electricity for your house. You could charge your car at night when energy is cheap, then use the stored electricity during the day when demand is higher. In many countries, energy providers offer tariffs that make it possible.

But for Vehicle-to-Home to work, many things need to fit together. Homes need smart energy management to monitor consumption, solar generation, the car’s charge level and the times when energy should flow back. There are also technical differences between car models that must be managed in order to avoid short circuits or damage to the battery and the home’s electrical system.

On top of that, constant charging and discharging may age batteries faster. Since EV batteries are expensive and not yet fully recyclable, there’s still no clarity on who covers the costs if one fails early – the manufacturer, the grid operator, the energy supplier or the car owner? Until these issues are resolved, Vehicle to Home won’t reach mass adoption.

▬ Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Imagine everyone comes home from work, plugs in their electric car, turns on the heating, lights, and oven – this would put a huge strain on the grid. With Vehicle-To-Grid, electric cars could feed electricity back into the grid during peak times and charge overnight during off-peak hours. This would reduce the need for new power plants and help stabilise the grid.
In theory, you could even earn money by selling electricity back or being paid for providing your car as an energy buffer.

But in reality, you’d need a bidirectional charger, which is still very expensive, and a car that supports it. Many EVs already have the hardware, but without the right software and affordable wallboxes, it’s useless.

But let’s not forget about the legal side of using this technology: What about income taxes, local grid limits, meter accuracy, or liability if something goes wrong? And how do you handle battery wear from all this extra charging and discharging? None of this is solved yet - although some countries are already ahead. France, for instance, has made significant progress on the regulatory side, and even in the UK, there are now fewer legal barriers standing in the way.

So for now, Vehicle-To-Grid remains a long way away from practical use. For homeowners, spending several thousand euros on a bidirectional charger is simply too risky and not worth the money.

Yes, bidirectional charging could be the future, undoubtedly. It could stabilise the grid and open up new ways to save or even earn money. But right now, there are still too many unanswered technical and legal questions. And to be clear - at the moment, no electric cars can fully support bidirectional AC charging according to the standard. The only version that actually works today is Vehicle-to-Load. True bidirectional charging is currently only possible with DC systems, but affordable DC chargers for private use are still very limited.

#v2g #v2l #v2h #BidirectionalCharging #EVcharging #ev #electriccars #goe #wallbox #tech

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