Toyota & Pepco begin V2G demonstration project
The V2G research will take place at Pepco’s Watershed Sustainability Center, located at the company’s Rockville Service Center in Montgomery County, Maryland, using a bidirectional charger. The project will explore bidirectional charging that allows electric vehicle owners to balance the grid and/or their homes when energy is required, such as during blackouts or when demand is high.
Toyota says Pepco will “design and evaluate a variety of EV charging and discharging use cases that can potentially provide grid and customer benefits.”
In April this year, the state of Maryland passed vehicle-to-grid legislation HB 1256 – the Distributed Renewable Integration and Vehicle Electrification (DRIVE) Act. This regulation requires utilities to develop interconnection processes for bidirectional chargers.
The demonstration project should help Pepco understand the infrastructure needed to enable the transport transition to electric vehicles. The results of the project should reveal some of the nuances of interconnecting large numbers of vehicles to the grid. This should better prepare the utility to implement the requirements of the DRIVE Act and to support customer adoption of this V2G technology.
“Bidirectional charging is a great way for customers to leverage their electric vehicles in a way that supports the grids and their home electricity ecosystem,” said Christopher Yang, group vice president, Toyota EV Charging Solutions. “Working with Pepco will help us understand charging and discharging use cases, which will ultimately benefit our customers and help utility providers better understand grid demands.”
Vehicle-to-grid trials are rolling out globally as more vehicle owners opt for electric vehicles. Also this month, German company The Mobility House launched a business unit dedicated to enabling electric vehicles to feed into the grid as more vehicles adopt this technology, such as the upcoming Renault with V2G function.
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