The Promise of V2X

Did you know your Electric Vehicle (EV) could soon power your home—not to mention California?

There’s been a lot of talk about how and where you can charge your electric vehicle (EV). But did you know that your EV can soon charge your home appliances—and even help power the state?

At VCE, we’re excited about the promise of new “vehicle-to-everything” (V2X) technologies, which the State of California is throwing support behind. Someday, V2X will help earn EV owners extra money—and make the grid more resilient and reliable, too. Here’s what the future holds in store for us.

How V2X works: Bidirectional charging

Many new EV models come with a feature called “bidirectional charging,” which means you can plug an electric device into your car’s charging port and power it using the car’s battery. These cars have an adapter that converts DC power from the car’s high-voltage battery back to AC power, which homes and electric appliances all use.

With bidirectional charging, you’ll soon be able to use your EVin creative new ways:

• Vehicle-to-load (V2L): With V2L, you could run lights, power tools, or computers by plugging them into your car. (Perhaps you’ve seen the Kia EV3 commercial that shows drivers using bidirectional charging to light up a campsite.) Just like “jumping” a car whose battery has died, you can even help start another EV that has run down its battery by plugging the car into your own for a few minutes.
• Vehicle-to-home (V2H): Several new EV chargers on the market take V2L one step further by connecting cars that have bidirectional charging to your home’s electric panel. With the right EV and the right charger, you could power your home for several days if an emergency arises, like these North Carolina EV drivers that provided power for their neighbors in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
• Vehicle-to-grid (V2G): The possibilities don’t stop with your home! Just like households with solar panels can sell the electricity they generate back to the power grid, soon you’ll also be able to sell power from your EV battery when the demand for electricity is peaking.

The promise of V2X in California

In order to shift away from fossil-fuel energy, we’re building lots of solar, wind, and geothermal power plants. We’re also adding tremendous amounts of battery storage. Giant batteries store the electricity that solar plants generate during the day, so we can continue powering homes at night with clean energy. Batteries also hold power for peak usage times. They can help prevent blackouts during heat waves or other climate events.

But we don’t just need massive batteries capable of storing megawatts of power. Soon, we will have thousands and thousands of EVs with bidirectional charging plugged into thousands and thousands of homes.

Someday, you may be able to charge up your car overnight when rates are low, plug into your garage’s charger when you get home from work, and sell that power back to VCE at higher rates. Clean energy experts like to say we’re creating “virtual power plants,” using the power from all of our home solar power panels and car batteries to supply electricity to everyone, everywhere, all the time.

VCE is helping pioneer V2X in California

The state of California still has technical and regulatory challenges in order to connect cars with bidirectional charging to the grid. But we are leading the way. On September 27, Governor Newsom signed SB 59 into law. This new law authorizes the California Energy Commission to work with other regulatory agencies to require every EV sold in California to have bidirectional charging.

At VCE, we’re excited about the promise of V2G. We’re already working with PG&E, state agencies, and innovative companies to become one of the first power agencies in California to connect our customers’ EVs to the grid.

The next time you wonder whether it’s time to buy an EV, just think: You won’t just be driving your family around. You’ll be driving your community toward a clean-energy future.