By David Slutzky, Co-founder, President, and CEO of Fermata Energy

Facilities management is fraught with many challenges — including controlling costs and budgets, improving efficiency, analyzing data, and maintaining resilience — all while meeting the baseline needs of the building occupants. Add to this list the increasing electrical loads resulting from workplace electric vehicle (EV) charging, and the path to effective facilities management becomes that much more difficult to navigate.

Picture for a moment, however, an EV-centric solution that helps to solve the challenges outlined above. Bidirectional electric vehicles — from light-duty passenger cars to heavy-duty trucks and buses — can benefit building owners, fleet operators and utilities by reducing the cost of building electricity and EV charging, as well as creating revenue streams by providing various services back to the electric grid.

Furthermore, EVs enabled with bidirectionality (the ability to charge and discharge) can enhance grid resilience and harden building assets against natural disasters and the effects of climate change. Bidirectional charging can also help organizations realize their goals of decarbonizing building operations and transportation.

At this point, it is worth diving into more detail about what bidirectional charging is and what it is not. While most people are familiar with the concept of EV charging, which is most often done using a “unidirectional” (i.e., one way) charger, bidirectional charging entails precisely what it implies: the ability to both charge and discharge an EV battery using the same charger.

Generally speaking, in order to facilitate bidirectional charging, three key elements are required: a bidirectionally capable EV; a compatible bidirectional charger; and software capable of managing the charging activities to ensure adequate charge in the vehicle while making it possible for the vehicle to earn money while it is parked. When operating together, this system allows facilities managers and fleet operators to tap into the electrical energy stored in an EV’s battery at peak-load times to help reduce electricity costs and consumption from non-renewable sources.

Commonly known as vehicle-to-everything (V2X), the EV, bidirectional charger, and software collectively leverage energy stored in an EV’s battery to supply power to the electric grid (vehicle-to-grid/V2G), to a building (vehicle-to-building/V2B) at specific times of the day, or even as emergency back-up power or for rate arbitrage.

To illustrate how this works, imagine a bidirectionally capable EV — which can be thought of as a swimming pool filled with electrical energy instead of water — is connected to a compatible bidirectional charger functioning as a “two-way valve” of sorts that opens and closes as needed to allow the filling and emptying of the EV’s “energy reservoir” in response to electricity demand. 

Serving as the brains of the operation is software that monitors, for example, a building’s electricity loads in near-real time and forecasts peak loads based on a number of factors, including historical electricity usage and weather conditions. When the software determines an increase in peak load is imminent — such as when a building’s chiller plant turns on — it will tell the charger to discharge the optimal amount of energy from the EV’s battery to offset the peak load. Doing so in this manner has the effect of reducing costly demand charges that often result from increased demand and peak loads.

In addition to this type of “behind-the-meter” activity, V2X allows the user to participate in energy markets by engaging in utility demand response programs, monetizing an EV’s battery storage and dramatically reducing the building’s cost of electricity. For example, a case study by ESource in October of 2020 verified that during the first month of a V2B demonstration project in Danville, Virginia, less than half of a Nissan LEAF’s battery energy was dispatched over a single 15-minute peak period, while saving the building owner almost $192 in utility demand charges. 

Today, V2X is being successfully demonstrated in real-world environments at multiple sites across the United States. Recent V2G pilot projects involve utilities such as Green Mountain Power in Vermont and the Roanoke Electric Cooperative in North Carolina. 

Similarly, a number of V2B projects are supporting municipal, fleet, and general building operations with the City of Boulder and The Alliance Center, both in Colorado, the Electric Frog Company in Rhode Island, and Nissan North America at its headquarters in Tennessee. 

Although Nissan’s popular LEAF has garnered most of the attention when it comes to EVs capable of bidirectional charging, multiple vehicle OEMs are bringing bidirectionally enabled vehicles to the market next year, and several medium- and heavy-duty EVs will also be equipped with this feature soon.

An example of this can be found in electric school buses. Given that school buses of any type are generally dormant in the middle of the day and during summer breaks, periods of time when the grid can experience substantially increased demand and instability, electric school buses have the potential to unlock significant monetization, resilience, and grid-stabilization opportunities. In addition, electric school buses are simply healthier for the driver and student riders from an emissions standpoint, and offer economic benefits to school districts in terms of reduced maintenance costs when compared to traditional diesel-powered buses.

Earlier this year, Maryland’s Montgomery County Schools took practical steps to adopt V2X‑capable electric school buses by signing an agreement with Highland Electric Transportation. Under this arrangement, Highland will essentially provide the district with electric buses in collaboration with Thomas Built buses. Highland will then manage the electric bus fleet, ensuring that they are charged and ready to go each day without disruption, and discharge energy from those buses when they are parked during the day or over summer breaks to lower demand charges or feed power back into the grid as needs arise.

As evidenced by substantial reductions in costly demand charges and with its ability to provide energy resilience and grid stabilization, V2X is proving to be an intelligent and cost-efficient means of supporting facilities, building operations and fleet management. 

In addition to pilots and growing commercial demand in the U.S., there are a number of international V2X applications underway. In Japan, for example, vehicle-to-home (V2H) has been in relatively widespread use since 2012, which to a large extent was prompted by the effects of the tsunami that disrupted the power grid in many parts of that country the prior year. During the recovery efforts that followed, EVs demonstrated the ability to deliver power where it was needed, so much so that many Japanese automakers now offer a V2H outlet in their EVs sold in Japan.

Other V2X activities in Japan include a joint V2G demonstration project comprised of Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, Tokyo Electric Power Company, Hitachi Systems Power Services and other key stakeholders, which was kicked off in August of 2020. The key focus of this project, which was made possible by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry through its Sustainable Open Innovation Initiative, is to study general EV-grid interoperability and to demonstrate how battery EVs and plug-in EVs can be leveraged as Virtual Power Plants (VPP) to help stabilize the grid as the volume of renewable energy sources come online.

As with Japan, Europe is recognizing the value of V2X in a multitude of applications and, as a result, considers the technology key in helping to satisfy the continent’s future energy requirements. In 2020, for example, Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA), initiated a V2G pilot program at its manufacturing facility in Mirafiori, Italy. According to FCA, 700 bidirectional chargers will be installed at the complex by the end of 2021, enabling up to 25MW of power to be discharged from FCA’s EVs to support grid stabilization.

Similar to the previously mentioned V2B pilot project at its North American headquarters, Nissan is investigating the technical and commercial viability of V2G at its European Technical Center in Cranfield, United Kingdom (UK). It is hoped that the project, which is funded in part by Innovate UK, the “innovation arm” of the UK government, will prove out sustainable technologies and business models for EV fleets based in the UK.

Reflecting the ever-growing interest that other European automakers are showing in V2X, Audi announced last year its intent to study and develop V2H capabilities. For this application, a V2H-enabled Audi EV could serve as a storage medium for solar energy generated throughout the day by residential photovoltaic panels. Then, later in the evening, when people have come home from work to make dinner and watch TV, and grid demand and electricity rates can remain high, the EV can power the home, thereby reducing electricity costs and alleviating some measure of demand on the grid.

In addition to the more traditional behind-the-meter or in-front-of-the-meter V2X applications, such as demand-charge management, demand response, frequency regulation, and grid stabilization, V2G has been identified as an ideal complement to existing renewable energy sources. For example, if Germany’s wind farms in the Baltic generate too much electricity, the energy produced can be stored in EVs until it is needed at a later time to satisfy power shortages or an increase in grid demand throughout Germany.

With V2X, an EV becomes valuable beyond its initial intended use as clean transportation, and when integrated into a building’s energy management system, it becomes a powerful tool in solving many of the key challenges facing today’s facility managers.

If you would like to explore the possibilities of V2X technology for your facilities, please visit https://www.fermataenergy.com or email info@fermataenergy.com.

About Fermata Energy

Park it. Plug it. Profit.TM Fermata Energy’s proprietary vehicle-to-everything (V2X) software platform and bidirectional chargers turn EVs into mobile energy storage assets, making it possible for EVs owners to combat climate change, increase energy resilience, and reduce energy costs. Learn more at www.fermataenergy.com, and follow us on Twitter (@FermataEnergy) and LinkedIn.