Eindhoven 2nd Dutch city with shared cars feeding energy to grid

Eindhoven is the second city in the Netherlands where shared cars use vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. Thanks to the collaboration between Renault Group, MyWheels, We Drive Solar, and the municipality of Eindhoven, electric shared cars can not only drive but also feed energy back into the grid. The principle of feeding energy back into the grid is a promising step that can combat the problem of grid congestion, make the grid more flexible, and contribute to a faster transition to sustainable energy.

On Monday, December 1, the first Renault 5 E-Tech electric shared cars in Eindhoven started feeding energy back into the grid. This year, 28 shared cars that can feed energy back into the grid will be operating in Eindhoven. Next year, this will be expanded to 100 V2G shared cars. Spread throughout the city, there will be 50 bidirectional charging stations, each with two connections.

Driving batteries

Last summer, the first V2G shared car project took place in Utrecht. The electric vehicles store energy when the supply of green energy is high and feed it back during peak times. By deploying decentralized technology in a scalable way, the driving batteries help to balance the local energy grid and make better use of the capacity of renewable energy.

Results in Utrecht

Network operator Stedin reports positive results from five months of V2G charging in Utrecht. With 50 cars, up to 300 kW of grid congestion was reduced in the evenings and a total of more than 65,000 kWh was fed back into the grid. With the addition of 120 V2G shared cars in Utrecht, attempts will be made this winter to achieve 1 MW of congestion reduction at several times by further optimizing control. This corresponds to the peak demand of approximately 1,000 households during the evening hours.

Smart, clean city

Eindhoven is therefore the second location. Robert Strijk, Alderman for Mobility for the municipality of Eindhoven: "The principle of electric shared cars that also feed energy back into the grid fits in perfectly with our vision of a smart, clean, and liveable city. The technology promises a double win: sustainable mobility and a smart energy system. At the same time, we want to remain realistic and investigate in practice whether these cars do indeed contribute to grid balancing and lower car ownership. Then we can determine whether it works for our city."