How realistic is it to use electric cars as virtual electricity storage? In order to advance research and development, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) is providing 80 million euros to support electromobility and its integration into the electricity markets - with a focus on bidirectional charging.
"To make bidirectional charging a reality as quickly as possible, we are providing targeted support for research and development. Our goal is for Germany to become the lead market and lead provider for electromobility and its integration into the electricity grid," says Michael Kellner, Parliamentary State Secretary at the BMWK. The BMWK is therefore currently supporting 37 research and development projects as part of the Elektro-Mobil funding program. Today, electric cars already have more storage capacity than all pumped storage power plants combined. In the coming years, the same amount of storage capacity will be added each year. E-cars are not in motion 96% of the time and therefore have plenty of capacity to act as storage through bidirectional charging.
They are virtually interconnected by aggregators. In this way, the electric cars can help stabilize the electricity grid, for example when more energy is produced than can be consumed or as a reserve in times of high electricity demand and to stabilize the grid.
Bidirectional charging is a new type of charging technology that allows electricity to flow in two directions: During a classic charging process, the electricity only flows from the charging station into the car battery of the electric vehicle, i.e. only in one direction (unidirectional). With bidirectional charging, the electricity can also flow from the battery via the charging station back into the power grid. The car battery serves as an efficient intermediate storage unit. The electric car is transformed from a mere "electricity consumer" into a co-supporter of the power grid.
