Ovo trial lets customers power homes with an electric car – but will it cut energy bills?
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Ovo says electric vehicle owners could save hundreds on bills by powering their home with their CAR…but it could be years before most see the benefits
- Ovo says users can save £800 a year by selling power from their electric cars
- But the scheme is based on installing expensive, hard-to-find chargers first
- The trial is also only open to Ovo customers with electric Volkswagen cars
Electric car owners may be able to save hundreds of euros on energy bills with a new Ovo Energy test, but only if they manage to fit a rare expensive charger first.
The Ovo trial, which kicks off today, takes advantage of the fact that electric cars are essentially just a giant battery on wheels.
The idea is that if you charge your car with cheap off-peak energy, you can make money in two ways: by using that electricity during peak hours to power your home, and by selling it for a profit to the National grid to sell.
But the question of who pays for the £6,000 chargers needed to run the scheme – Ovo or the customer – could see energy bill savings wiped out for years to come.
Limited: the trial is currently only open to drivers with electric vehicles from Volkswagen
Ovo ran a limited trial of the scheme from 2020 to 2022, and some users managed to save up to £800 a year on energy bills.
But drivers will need to have a special charger installed at home before they can save money on energy bills, and this time they may have to pay for it themselves.
Normal electric car chargers allow current to flow in a vehicle in one direction. To recover power from the fittings of an electric car, a ‘bi-directional’ charger is required.
These chargers are almost impossible to find, and most UK homes have them fitted for free by companies that have tested the technology – as Ovo did in 2020-2022.
But Ovo is tight-lipped on whether it will pay for the dedicated chargers this time or expect consumers to pay instead. The energy company said any energy savings would not come until much later this year and “will not share any final details on this at this time.”
Ginny Buckley, an electric car expert at the website Electrifying, says that “consumers can’t buy bi-directional chargers yet.” This Is Money did manage to find a company selling bi-directional chargers, but they cost £5,990.
The company, Voltacon, based in Coventry, said its Quasar charger is “the world’s first bi-directional home charger”.
If subjects have to pay for this special charger, it could be years before they see any utility bills, unless they’re lucky enough to already have one installed in their home.
The scheme is currently only open to Ovo customers who own Volkswagen electric cars, but the energy company hopes to expand it to owners of other car companies in the future.
Ovo’s “vehicle-to-everything” trial of strength, called Inflexion, is being conducted with energy software company Kaluza.
The government is also pouring £16 million of funding into this technology.
Energy and Climate Minister Graham Stuart said: ‘We want to make smart charging an easier choice for electric vehicle drivers, whether that’s charging in the driveway, at the workplace or parked on the street. To do that, we need to build new network infrastructure at a rapid pace, using the latest available technologies.’
Alex Thwaites, head of zero carbon living at Ovo Energy, said: ‘This is not just about driving sustainable energy solutions, it’s about showing how customers can actually lower their energy bills by switching to an electric vehicle.’
Customers can register their interest in the trial by visiting the Ovo website.
If it can be made affordable for customers, this sort of scheme could be a big part of the future of electric car ownership in the UK.
Buckley said: ‘We see it becoming a big part of managing demand on the UK electricity grid as more of us move to electric cars and we move to renewable energy generation.’