E-cars as batteries
Climate-neutral electricity is good, but it often cannot be stored. When the sun shines or the wind is strong, a lot of energy is therefore lost if it is not stored temporarily. Now there are car models that are supposed to provide a remedy.
In the Netherlands, surplus clean electricity has so far been sold to the surrounding countries. But even across the border there are more and more solar panels and wind turbines that produce surplus electricity that cannot be stored. The Dutch, however, do not want to waste their electricity and are now using car batteries for storage. This has many advantages. Hyundai's Ioniq 5 model is supposed to help.
And it works like this: In a new housing development in Utrecht, the Netherlands, which produces its own electricity in an exemplary climate-friendly way, 25 of these cars are used to store the electricity in their batteries and feed it back into the 2500 households in the flats when needed.
This system is called V2G (vehicle-to-grid), and the vehicles are bidirectional, i.e. "two-way", once into the vehicle and then out of the vehicle into another grid. Apart from Hyundai, Ford and Volkswagen offer this service, with small differences: Hyundai first offers the V2L (Vehicle-to-Load) system as standard, which allows you to draw your electricity directly from a household socket. Ford offers the next version up, V2H (Vehicle-to-Home), and Volkswagen already installed this technology in all its ID models last year, which only needs to be activated by a software update. Tesla founder Musk has spoken out against the technology, arguing for a separation of moving and stationary batteries.
Others see the combination as precisely the strongest argument: if rigid batteries that cannot be moved have to be maintained, repaired or replaced, bottlenecks in service are already foreseen, especially as more and more of the batteries come onto the market. It is above all this flexibility with which the batteries score points in contrast to fixed batteries. The fear that the batteries could wear out more quickly due to the stress of charging and discharging has so far proved unfounded in studies. The danger of being left with an empty battery the next morning can also be prevented by simply entering the desired time at which you want to set off. The battery then stops in time to feed the electricity into the household grid.
For the e-car trade, this is of course another sales argument, because the dual function makes the switch to electric more and more sensible.