Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Technology in Electric Mobility: An optimistic view of the future.

Although the government has issued many different incentives to encourage people to buy electric vehicles, many consumers are still reluctant to purchase a pure battery EV. Battery range, charging method, and availability of charging infrastructure are the primary reasons for concern.

There are three types of electric vehicles in current market today: battery electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and fuel-cell electric vehicles (Hydrogen fuel cell). All these vehicles can generate clean AC power at power levels from 10kW to 200kW.

Think of the electric vehicle battery as an equivalent to home inverter technology, which charges the battery when the main power is available and provides power to the home when the main fails.

V2G allows electric vehicles to feed power from their battery packs to the grid or pull power from the grid to recharge their batteries. Thus, electric vehicles can be used as distributed resources and their power can be transmitted to the grid at peak times.

EV owners can also reduce or eliminate the cost of batteries used in home inverters by directly sending solar power to their EV batteries during the day and consuming that power at night through vehicle to grid technology.

There have been discussions about Vehicle to Grid (V2G) for almost a decade, and many vehicle manufacturers, such as Nissan e-NV200, Nissan leaf, and Mitsubishi, are already offering this functionality.