Erni's Electrifying Tricks: The Power Plant on Your Doorstep

Monday, 8 AM in Germany. Today, Mr. Zündel has a meeting with his boss, Mr. Diesel, who, to his surprise, is in an exceptionally good mood today. After all, he spent the entire weekend at an event on the topic of company fleets and electrification. Hardly has he finished his thought when his boss interrupts him.

"Mr. Zündel, the fleet event was simply amazing. It wasn't just about electrification—which can already save a company quite a bit in costs, not to mention the CO2 savings—but also about future technologies and scenarios. Super exciting, I tell you. One topic was bidirectional charging."

Mr. Diesel starts to expound and can't stop enthusing:

"Imagine, in the future, we won't just be charging the car but using the car as a power bank. With such a mobile charging station, you could, for example, plug in a coffee maker while camping, refuel other vehicles—of course with surplus energy from the PV system, use the energy for construction equipment, and even stabilize the entire grid."

"Exactly," says Mr. Zündel, immediately scaling up the entire fleet in his mind:

"You could use the entire fleet as an energy storage system and call it up when needed. You'd have your own power plant right outside your door! If that's not a cool trick!"

What does this mean?

Bidirectional charging is one of the major topics in the energy and mobility transition because, when applied intelligently on a large scale, it turns all vehicles combined into huge buffer stores that help stabilize the power grid.