Utrecht, Netherlands, Hyundai Launch Vehicle-to-Grid Charging

Utrecht, a city in the Netherlands, is touting the world’s “first bidirectional region.” In partnership with Hyundai, the city’s 500 new charging stations and a car-sharing network of Ioniq 5 EVs will support the transfer of electricity from cars to the grid, as opposed to the status quo of vice versa.

The promise of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging

Let’s say it’s 5pm and your city is headed into peak usage hours, when the grid is running at full capacity. V2G feeds juice back into the system. At 5am—when consumption is lower—the EV recharges. In a way, your car has become an intelligent metering- and energy storage system.

You’re smoothing the peaks of energy consumption by calibrating supply with demand. This is especially useful for grid systems with a high ratio of wind and solar generation, since these renewable sources produce intermittent power on a non-fixed schedule.

• Generally speaking, you must consume power when you generate it.
• “Smart charging” systems don’t have to be just cars. Tesla wants to turn homes into distributed power plants using its vehicles, solar panels, and battery Powerpacks.

Bottom line: “Smart city” is something that is said much more than it is built—or used euphemistically to describe surveillance projects. But in Utrecht’s case, we have a view of urban technology being deployed in action. —RD