Audi working on technology that will let you use car battery to power your home

Audi is said to be working on a technology that only a few other manufacturers have explored. The ability to give electricity back to a grid from an electric vehicle may not be new but it is still intriguing.

What Audi is terming as Vehicle to Home (V2H) is a concept that is fairly new. This is also because the use of electric cars is only just picking up steam. The new tech will allow a person to power their home using the car’s battery when the car is not being used.

Audi is developing the V2H with Hager Group a German electricals installations manufacturer for bi-directional charging on the Audi e-Tron. In the test grid, the car uses DC wall charger with a 12 kW charging capacity and a home storage unit with a 9 kW capacity. Because of this and the overall DC voltage level in the grid, the car didn’t require an inverter making it very efficient.

This also allows the car to function as an energy storage unit for houses powered by solar panels and energy. With this, the car can store the energy generated and gathered by solar panels when it is sunny and then power the house at other times. This could also help in times of blackouts.

Ulrich Reiner, project manager at Hager Group says, “Using the battery of electric vehicles to contribute to climate protection while lowering electricity costs at the same time is a vision that we have found fascinating since the very beginning. And we have found an ideal partner in Audi.”

Martin Dehm, technical project manager for bidirectional charging at Audi says, “Electric mobility is bringing the automotive industry and the energy sector closer together. The battery of an Audi e-tron could supply a single-family home with energy for around one week independently. Looking ahead, we want to make this potential accessible and make the electric car part of the energy transition as an energy storage device on four wheels.”