⚡How your Volkswagen can power your home 🔋🏠

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Here’s what we have for you today:

• How your Volkswagen can power your home 🔋🏠

• 3 Links 🔗

• Opportunity 🗝️

• Meme of the week 🤡

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How your Volkswagen can power your home 🔋🏠

Volkswagen Group (VW) has been talking about bringing bidirectional charging to its electric vehicles for several years now. As far back as its “VW Power Day” event in 2021, the company promised to bring DC bi-directional charging to its vehicles “by the end of 2022”.

Of course, this deadline since came and passed.

But then, back in December 2023 (we reported), VW announced that vehicles on the MEB platform (e.g. ID4, ID5, ID.Buzz) with a 77 kWh battery, will receive the ability to discharge energy with the latest software version (3.5 or higher).

In its press release at the time VW stated that bidirectional charging will initially only be compatible with HagerEnergy’s DC home power system and limited to the vehicle-to-home (V2H) use case.

Since then, some more information has surfaced via two German-language videos that E3DC (part of HagerEnergy) published on it’s Youtube channel (Video 1, Video 2).

To save y’all some time, we watched the videos and summarized the key facts (in English 😉):

• E3/DC is a German subsidiary of Hager - a family-owned German electronics conglomerate - and has been offering solar inverter and home energy storage systems for over a decade.

• E3/DC has deployed hardware at ~120k customer homes. Of these, ~50k units are HW/SW compatible with the DC V2H wallbox (Called “Edison V2H”) that is compatible with VW vehicles.

• In 2024, E3/DC expects to only build about 500 units of the Edison V2H wallbox.

• The wallbox itself can discharge energy into a Hager home battery (the Hager S10 model) at up to 11kW via the CCS2 connector. The efficiency (excl. vehicle losses) is ~94%. (Edison V2H spec sheet)

• The company also has a DIN-rail Home Energy Management System (HEMS) device, which can measure solar production. The goal is to make this HEMS + the DC V2H wallbox interoperable with 3rd party solar/battery hardware, for example, SMA Solar inverters or Tesla Powerwall batteries. This is comparable to the SPAN.io smart panel in the US which serves as a HEMS and is interoperable with stationary battery systems from Tesla, LG, Solaredge, Enphase, and others (Source).

In the second video we learn that Markus Hackmann from P3 eMobility Consulting is one of the first users that has the E3/DC Edison V2H wallbox for Bidi in use at his home in Germany:

• Even prior to using V2H, he is already energy self-sufficient for 7 months out of the year with his existing solar&battery storage combo from E3/DC.

• He expects this to go up to 9 months/year of energy self-sufficiency with the addition of V2H.

• He uses the 77kWh VW ID4 with Software version 3.5.

• Volkswagen allows him to do V2H discharging for up to 4000hrs or 10,000kWh without voiding the battery warranty - whichever comes first.

• Discharging from the vehicle only works between 20-80% SoC (= ~45kWh capacity available for discharging - this is several Tesla Powerwalls!) and is based on charging location.

It’s great to see the first V2H system from Volkswagen up and running at a customer's home. This makes VW the second major car manufacturer bringing DC bidirectional charging to market - after Ford in the US (we reported).

Open questions that remain for us:

• When will VW expand discharging interoperability to more charging stations from other manufacturers than just E3/DC?

• What does a realistic business case for this V2H setup look like in terms of hardware cost, installation cost, and energy savings?

• When will we see VW enable actual discharging into the grid (V2G) and provide associated dynamic import/export grid tariffs that support this?

As a matter of fact, these are the same open questions that remain for us with Ford’s Intelligent Backup Power system in the US. Stay tuned. ⚡️

3 Links 🔗

• Rivian opening network🔌: US EV startup Rivian announced in its 2024 Shareholder letter that it plans to open up its Rivian Adventure Network (RAN) to 3rd party vehicles in the second half of 2024. The move is likely motivated by a desired to increase network utilization, as well as achieving eligiblity for public funding - the company specifically calls this out in the note. The network currently features >400 chargers across 67 sites in the US and the company claims that the network achieved a 97% uptime in 2023. (Link)

• Contemplating loyalty?🔗 : Pan-European fast charging network IONITY seems to be working on the concept of a B2C loyalty program for its charging service. The company is looking for a Product Manager to head up the initiative (Link).

• Kaluza x wallbox V2G💡: British Kaluza Energy is a leading global software platform for dynamic energy tariffs, V1G and V2G services. The company is a subsidiary of British retail electricity provider OVO group and we have featured their British V2G pilot research in past editions. Now the company is also entering the North American market where it just announced a collaboration with wallbox and California utility PG&E. The program is funded by the California Energy Commissiona and will include up to 330 EVs in PG&E territory that can participate in V1G services. An unspecified number of these EVs will also be paired with wallbox’s Quasar 2 DC V2G wallbox, enabling users to export power back to their homes or offer emergency back-up power when the grid is down. Based on the announced compatibility between the Quasar 2 and KIA’s EV9 (video) we can probably expect the EV9 to be one of the vehicles used for the pilot. Note: The program is separate from PG&E’s existing V2X pilot program (we reported).

Most-clicked link last week: was Octopus Energy’s first mass-market V2G tariff launching in the UK (Link)

Opportunity🗝️:

Recently we’ve been thinking about sharing emobility startup investing opportunities with y’all by building a mailing list.

So if you:

• are a keen believer in e-mobility and share our passion for EVs and charging ⚡️

• love the idea of having exposure to promising EV startups in both Silicon Valley and across Europe 🚀

• are comfortable making private company investments and have at least $25,000 / 25.000€ in patient capital to invest over the next few years 💰

Then complete this 1-minute survey and get in touch with us:

We’ll reach out to those interested over the coming weeks.

Have a good week friends,

Janek & Julius

Meme of the Week 🤡

🤣🤣🤣

That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Reader Review of the Week

Selected ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️ Freakin´ awesome on⚡ Look at this Indoor Fast-Charging Hub and wrote:

“Well, friends - first you need to release an electric vehicle for sale in North America." --> Nice punshline!"

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed.