First AC vehicle to grid EV chargers now installed in fleet depots

Denbighshire County Council has become one of the first organisations to have an innovative vehicle to grid (V2G) electric vehicle (EV) charger installed in its fleet depot using AC rather than DC current.

Vehicle to grid charging offers the potential for EV owners and fleets to reduce energy costs as well as to improve the resilience of the UK’s electricity system by allowing an EV to take power from the grid and also to send power back.

The V2VNY (Vehicle 2 Volume Energy Yield) project is trialling lower cost V2G chargers using AC (alternating current) rather than DC (direct current) which are more suitable for charging at home and at many workplaces.

The project is being led by Hangar19, in partnership with CrowdCharge and DriveElectric. Other project partners are Electric Corby, Oxfordshire County Council, Grid Beyond and JLR. JLR is providing prototype electric vehicles for use in the trial.

Hangar19 is one of the UK’s leading independent engineering companies in the electric vehicle supply equipment space, specialising in EV chargepoint management solutions and the manufacture of reliable charging points, particularly targeted at critical fleets. It has developed the first multi socket AC bidirectional charger on the market. 

The vehicle to grid charging on the V2VNY trial is being simulated and optimised by AI technology from CrowdCharge, a company that has been running V2G in homes for over three years with effective results.

Denbighshire County Council is a forward thinking organisation in the areas of sustainability, decarbonisation, energy and transitioning to electric vehicles. Its Fleet Services Centre has over 400 vehicles, over 100 of which are EVs, including electric cars, vans, 16 seat minibuses, refuse collection trucks, and even specialist off road vehicles capable of operating in the local authority’s large expanse of countryside. The depot generates its own electricity from solar panels linked to a battery storage system as part of a smart local energy system.

Martin Griffiths, fleet mobility lead officer, Denbighshire County Council, said: ‘Vehicle to grid charging, combined with a fleet of EVs, solar generation and battery storage, offers us the potential to reduce reliance on the grid even further, providing greater resilience if there was a problem with the UK’s electricity network. V2G is also expected to deliver savings on energy costs, as well as reducing carbon emissions.’

Denbighshire County Council is using a Kia EV6 electric car with vehicle to load (V2L) capability for the V2VNY V2G trial. The EV6 is tasked with a wide range of duties and has performed faultlessly, and like the other EVs on the fleet, has resulted in huge savings in running costs compared to diesel vehicles. It has even used its V2L function to charge other EVs.

Councillor Barry Mellor, lead member for environment and transport, Denbighshire County Council, said: ‘As a council, we are working extremely hard to address the climate and nature emergency we declared in 2019. A vital part of this is reducing our own carbon footprint, with a big focus on the council fleet.

‘We fully welcome the opportunity to have such an innovative system installed at our fleet depot and look forward to seeing its impact on conserving energy use at the site.’

The council’s involvement in the V2VNY V2G trial has already attracted lots of positive interest from other local authorities and the Welsh government. The project has also installed V2G chargepoints for other councils including East Lothian, Islington, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. 

The trial aims to demonstrate a commercially viable way for fleet owners, businesses and EV drivers to save money and carbon, and for the UK to reduce the load on the electricity grid at peak times.

If an EV is charged when electricity prices are low and then it returns electricity back to the grid at peak times when prices are high, fleet operators can save on electricity costs. The project is also trialling sending energy from EVs to buildings and to other vehicles as part of V2X (Vehicle to Everything).

The trial is harnessing AC bidirection technology, which the innovative charger synchronises with the grid. The AC solution is more efficient at low power and is therefore more suited for the use of V2G in a workplace or domestic setting, as well as meaning much lower costs for a charger.

V2G is seen by many industry experts as offering an important way to store energy generated by renewables and then to supply this back to the grid at peak times, to help reduce the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels and to accelerate progress to net zero. There are now over 1.4 million EVs on UK roads, with this figure growing every month, providing an ever increasing quantity of mobile battery storage units.