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California has long been at the forefront of clean technology and electric vehicle (EV) adoption, with nearly 40% of the EVs in the United States on the road in the Golden State in 2022 (EIA), and ambitious statewide goals to combat climate change and improve air quality. Much of that progress has been driven or overseen by the California Energy Commission (CEC), the state's primary policy and planning agency, whose mission is to help California reduce energy costs, curtail greenhouse gas emissions, and ensure a safe, resilient, and reliable supply of energy.
Every year the CEC awards grants to companies working on a variety of initiatives that support the CEC’s goals. Bidirectional Energy recently won one of these grants under the Responsive, Easy Charging Products With Dynamic Signals (REDWDS) solicitation. The initiative aims to accelerate development and deployment of – you guessed it – easy-to-use charging products that enable EVs to respond to dynamic grid signals.
The gist is that EV charging equipment are technically capable of allowing EVs to charge and discharge, but the CEC is trying to answer questions like ‘when’ should EVs charge and discharge, ‘how much,’ and ‘how do we get EV owners to help’, which is the exact product that Bidirectional Energy was founded to provide.
Even more simply, the CEC wants to show that EVs can charge or discharge en masse when asked to do so. Explaining why this is important to the CEC requires its own blog post (we even wrote one!). Bottom line: for a limited time Bidirectional Energy is offering up-front and ongoing incentives for around 100 electric vehicle chargers to EV owners that want to be a part of this early V2G demonstration. Read on if you want to learn more!
California residents that join Bidirectional Energy’s cutting-edge REDWDS pilot program will have the opportunity to make owning an EV much cheaper by tapping into the following, limited opportunities:
The duration of the program is a year from installation, but with Bidirectional Energy and your new V2G-enabled EV charger, you will be able to tap into other cost-savings or revenue-earning opportunities that arise in the future. Your EV costs money to own and upkeep – like registration fees and regular maintenance – but with a V2G charger and a services partner like Bidirectional Energy, you can monetize the energy stored in your EV to help offset those costs, well beyond the course of this pilot.
There are a few phases to your journey as a customer, but Bidirectional Energy will be with you every step of the way:
We at Bidirectional Energy see our platform as a natural fit for REDWDs, and as a small, growing company, we get a lot out of this grant project: we bring our product to market, we build foundational partnerships, and we get to demonstrate that we can successfully work together with EV drivers to bring V2G solutions to electric grids across the country. Together with the CEC, and using participating data gathered during this program (such as how much energy each EV provided to the electric grid when dispatched by Bidirectional Energy), we hope to prove this concept is ready for prime time.
In exchange for a subsidized EV charger, we require EV owners to participate in the V2G VPPs they are enrolled in for the duration of the pilot. In starker terms, that means that periodically, your vehicle will send some of its stored energy back to the electric grid in exchange for financial compensation. We think this is a pretty good deal, especially if you are already inclined to use your vehicle’s V2G capabilities!
The best part is that, with the Bidirectional Energy platform and app, you can always adjust your level of performance to fit better with your planned use of your car. About to take a long road-trip when a dispatch signal comes in? No problem! You can use the app to change how much stored energy you want to reserve for later!
Also important, Bidirectional Energy will retain and share some of your EV charger’s energy data to help study the impact of V2G technology on the grid – mostly because there is no way to tell whether your EV is participating or not without information on charging and discharging! This data is private and will never be shared with external parties.
Bidirectional Energy is proud to partner with a diverse group of organizations on this project, including but not limited to:
If you're a California resident interested in participating in this program, here's what you need to know:
*All savings and earnings are contingent upon a number of factors, not least of which is how you choose to operate your EV. Customers that make more of their EV energy available for V2G, for example, or those that participate consistently, stand to make more than their peers. Likewise, choosing to charge during the expensive periods outlined by your utility can directly affect your energy bill savings.
