VGI technology is ready for broader adoption, but now requires common standards for seamless communication and interoperability

Vehicle-grid Integration (VGI) can play a crucial role in helping utilities manage the growing electricity demand from electric vehicles, but Canada’s fragmented and inconsistent policy landscape risks slowing adoption.

That is the main finding of a new study by Dunsky Energy + Climate, prepared for the CSA Group.

VGI refers to technologies that enable EVs not only to draw power from the grid but also to supply it back, powering appliances, a home or even the grid itself through bidirectional charging.

“Your vehicle is a rolling battery,” says Jeff Turner, director of clean mobility at Dunsky and a co-author of the Charging Ahead: Unlocking Vehicle-Grid Integration in Canada report, in an interview with Electric Autonomy. “The average personal vehicle is a great opportunity to leverage an otherwise under-utilized battery. If your car is sitting in your driveway or parked at work most of the day with a lot of spare battery capacity, that’s the big opportunity for VGI.”

The challenge

To unlock that potential, vehicles and utilities need to communicate seamlessly. All VGI applications require a robust means of exchanging information between a vehicle and the energy supply and distribution system through sophisticated communications technology.

Currently, there are no standardized communication protocols that all utilities and automakers follow, says the Dunksy report. Instead, regulatory requirements and interfaces vary between vehicle models and jurisdictions, creating barriers to interoperability and slowing progress.

Turner advises that there needs to be broad collaboration across the industry so that all parties can agree on a common means of using technology that’s already available.

“There needs to be some agreed-upon protocol by which the utility can send out a request [for power], and the vehicle or the charging system knows how to receive that request and interpret it,” he adds.

The Dunsky report identifies other key priority areas to advance VGI policy standardization, these include:

• Harmonizing Canadian standards with international best practices to build interoperability and streamline regulatory compliance;
• Supporting V2G-AC (alternating current) standardization by establishing a certification pathway for evaluating grid performance;
• Providing a verification framework for VGI technologies to ensure systems work across the existing mix of protocols and standards; and
• Developing best practices for utility interconnection to guide utilities in integrating VGI applications into their operations.

If utilities can adopt a common language and OEMs actively engage with them on standardization, Turner says, the potential to use EVs, from passenger cars to fleets, as a source of energy storage and supply could become a practical reality.

Different vehicle-grid applications

There are four main VGI applications the Dunsky report highlights for their technical readiness and benefits: unidirectional smart charging (V1G), vehicle-to-load (V2L), vehicle-to-building/home (V2B/V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G).

Of these, smart V1G charging is the most common and widely available today. It allows utilities to control when and how quickly an EV charges, helping to balance electricity demand throughout the day.

“Any EV on the market today can do this,” says Turner.

Other bidirectional systems can both charge and discharge EV batteries. In this instance, the battery can be used to charge home appliances or serve as a backup power source during an outage.

Surplus energy can also supply power back to the electricity grid. Most pilot projects have used commercial fleets to demonstrate the potential of these untapped energy sources.

School buses, in particular, are ideal candidates.

“School buses are only needed for a few hours during the day,” explains Turner. “The rest of the day is downtime during which they can be providing valuable services to a utility and earning additional revenue. That’s the key ingredient for VGI to really take off.”