What is Vehicle-to-Building charging (V2B)?

Vehicle-to-Building charging is a fruit, like vehicle-to-grid (V2G), of large battery capacities developed for the electrical vehicles (EVs). Instead of buying and adding new batteries for storage, the already existing batteries in the owner’s electric vehicle can be utilized as storage. This way, a large additional investment will be avoided and existing investment better utilized. A number of vehicles are now available which can be utilized in this role.

Benefits of Vehicle-to-Building charging

Vehicle-to-building charging can be used in more than one beneficial ways:

Extra Storage: EV batteries are large by design. Excess solar output during the day can be stored at no extra cost in the vehicle batteries. The power control system (PCS) will come with the vehicle, and will store 20 to 50 KWh by current standards. Nissan LEAF 2016 (Leading Environmentally-Friendly Affordable Family car) will store 30KWh. This stored energy can be utilized at night, and if any spare, can be sold during peak load hours.
Emergency Backup: Electrical power stored in the vehicle batteries can be utilized to run a house in case of grid non availability. The 30 KWh stored in the Nissan LEAF model 2016 is considered sufficient to run an average Japanese home for over two days.
Grid Load Balancing: One vehicle may not make much difference. But when thousands of vehicles are contributing they can make a noticeable difference. They can store energy at low load demand hours at cheap rates (valley filling), and feed that to respective homes or offices during peak hours. Thus they have reduced the peak load on the grid (peak shaving), and saved the owners of vehicles some money.

Protocol

On the DC side, CHAdeMO (CHArge de MOve) Association's protocol for quick chargers is adopted globally for its great versatility, safety and reliability. On the AC side it is standard mains voltage according to national standards. For example, the Japanese LEAF offers 200 v, 3 wire, single phase AC to the building.