Hager Group and AUDI Work on Vehicle to Home Charging Techniques
Hager Group and AUDI propose a novel methodology to provide sufficient capacity for houses utilizing renewable energy sources through research project.
While renewable, clean energy sources continue to grow and grab a larger hold on the energy market, there are still many issues that will keep it from continuing this pace. The biggest bottleneck for this is the volatility of these green electricity sources, most popularly, solar, and wind.
Image courtesy of Hager.
Some days it can be sunny and windy, which then will produce more electricity than a home can use, and the rest will be wasted due to the cost of storage devices that can hold this extra power. Other days it can be cloudy and no wind, and a home might not be getting enough power for the required demand. With this issue, the Hager Group and AUDI have looked to solve it using another technology — through rapidly expanding electric vehicles (EV) technology.
V2H Technology
According to Hager Group’s press release, they have proposed an idea called “Vehicle to Home” (V2H) technology. This technology will allow the home and EV to interact with one another.
“V2H has major potential for reducing electricity costs of homeowners and increasing both grid stability and supply security in the event of a blackout,” explains Ulrich Reiner. “Using the battery of thousands of electric vehicles to make a significant contribution to climate protection is a vision that has fascinated us from the very beginning.”
Rather than the EV only pulling power from the house to charge itself, the home can also store extra energy obtained via solar panels on the house for later use. With this, the extra energy that was previously wasted is now stored within the vehicle’s battery and the home can pull power from that for use when needed.
A vehicle’s battery can store enough energy to power a single home for a week, according to Ulrich Reiner, E-mobility expert at Hager Group.
A Complex Project
This technology can provide a number of benefits for consumers, as it will allow users to leave a smaller carbon footprint by going to their EV for supplemental power when their renewables are running low rather than the grid. The grid is more stable due to less random pulls of power from homes lacking renewable energy, electricity usage costs will be lowered for the consumer, and in the event of a power loss, the home can depend on the EV, much like it would rely on a generator at home.
Image courtesy of Hager.
While this sounds like a very simple solution, the implementation of this technology is not easy. A smart-home energy management system is required for this to manage the power flow from vehicle to the home or vice versa depending on the current situation and need.
The design also looks to minimize the effect that the house would thus have on the car, meaning that they do not want the house to drain the battery of the EV thus not allowing someone to drive it, but instead the system must optimize the charge between the EV and home accordingly to prevent these issues.
This is the kind of technology needed to take renewables to the next level, without separating ourselves from fossil fuels, without drastically changing the current energy capabilities we demand.
