What's bidirectional charging?
What does it mean?
Bidirectional charging means you can charge your car 2 ways. Power goes from your house to your car via the charging station and the other way around. This also means you can store power, so you can use it for your cooktop or washing machine later at night. Thanks to this, you won't have to pay for expensive power from the grid.
Benefits of bidirectional charging
Storing power via bidirectional charging has the following advantages:
- Do you have solar panels? You can store power you generate during the day in your car. That way, you can use your car as a type of at-home battery. You can power appliances at night with your own green energy, instead of gray power from the grid. This is better for the environment and your wallet.
- Because you can store energy during the day and use it at night, you can save a lot on your energy bill. Power is more expensive at night, because the demand exceeds the supply.
- When you store power, you prevent the local energy network from overloading. You can store energy cheaply during the day, when supply exceeds demand.
When is this suitable for you?
You need the right charging station and car for bidirectional charging. This is why: your household appliances use alternating current, whilst your electric car uses direct current. A charging station convert the alternating current from your house into direct current for your car. When you retrieve the power from your car, the charging station has to invert the direct current to alternating current again. Currently, not many charging stations and cars support this function.
Is this possible at Coolblue Energy?
Bidirectional charging isn't possible at Coolblue Energy yet. But, we have good news: our charging stations are already prepared to support this in the future. We expect that this function will become available at the end of 2025. The focus for this is on vehicle-to-home (V2H), in which you use the energy from your car to power your house.
The difference between vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) are 2 types of bidirectional charging. This means that you can store energy with your electric car and feed it back in. The difference lies in where the energy goes to.
With V2G, your car feeds energy back into the power grid. This helps with keeping balance during peak hours. The Netherlands doesn't allow this yet.
With V2H, you can use the energy from your car for only your own home. This way, you can save on energy costs.