Project Bidirectional Charging Management—Results and Findings from the BCM Field Trial

The Bidirectional Charging project, which began in May 2019, aimed to develop an intelligent bidirectional charging management system and associated EV components to optimize the EV flexibility and storage capacity of the energy system. This paper focuses on the two main demonstrated use cases in the private customer field trial: PV self-consumption optimization and intraday arbitrage. In the PV self-consumption optimization use case, EVs were used as home storage systems to store PV energy that is charged into the traction battery during the day and then used to cover household loads after sunset. Results from the field trial showed that the customers who participated in the PV-Use Case saved an average of 7.5% of their electricity costs through feed-in from the EV after about one year of operation. The intraday arbitrage use case aimed to generate revenue through arbitrage trading of price differences in the intraday market. On a daily average, an EV charged 16 kWh and discharged 9 kWh in the intraday use case. Despite the challenges in implementation, the intraday arbitrage use case was successful in generating revenue through arbitrage trading. With the help of system optimizations such as improved flexibility forecasting based on a larger fleet and optimized trading, revenues would increase.