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Electric cars are often still relatively expensive - but there is money to be made from their batteries. In research projects, batteries have already generated revenues of more than 1000 euros per year. Over the next few years, there are likely to be numerous opportunities to earn money from batteries or save money with their help. A few options already exist today. What this means, what's coming and what's already here - and how you can benefit from them.
The energy system in Germany is currently undergoing fundamental change. In the past, there were a few large power plants that continuously generated electricity by burning coal or gas, for example. It was also very predictable when households and companies would need how much electricity. Today, thousands of wind turbines and photovoltaic systems all over Germany feed additional electricity into the grid - sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the weather. At the same time, electricity consumption and the fluctuations in it are increasing because more and more people own electric cars or heat pumps, which sometimes need energy and sometimes not. This diversity of electricity producers and consumers as well as the fluctuations pose numerous challenges for grids and markets. And this is exactly what e-car owners can take advantage of in various ways.
At particularly sunny or windy times, there is a lot of green electricity in the grid. Then the electricity on the exchanges is cheaper overall because there is a lot available. If, on the other hand, it is cloudy and windless, coal and gas-fired power plants have to generate the electricity at high cost. It is then expensive on the exchange. Until now, private individuals have often been unaware of these daily price fluctuations. They pay the same amount for their electricity every month. However, there are some dynamic electricity tariffs. If you take out one of these, you always pay the current price on the electricity exchange.
You can play with this: You can deliberately charge your car whenever energy is cheap. This can usually be viewed via an app. There are also already options for automatically charging the car at the wallbox at home at convenient times. This means that the bill at the end of the month can be lower than with a regular provider.
It could become even more lucrative in future if the electric car can charge "bidirectionally". This means that it can not only draw electricity from the socket, but also feed it back into the grid. A fully charged car that is not currently in use could then release around half of its charge back into the grid - while electricity prices are high. The car owner would effectively be "selling" electricity at the right moment, at a higher price than he had purchased it.
The idea of using the electric car to store your own solar power is particularly obvious. Anyone who has a photovoltaic system on their roof knows that a lot of electricity is generated around midday when the sun is high. If you want to fire up the oven in the evening, you may not be able to use your own PV electricity.
An electric car that can store and release electricity could fill up during the hours of sunshine and later serve as a large battery. Consumers would then be able to use their own cheap electricity in the evening.
Jens Strüker from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) says: "The potential that e-car batteries have for stabilizing the power grids cannot be emphasized enough. This can make a big difference to the energy transition." Electric cars can help relieve pressure on the power grid in various ways. In some cases, they can already save money.
Anyone who installs a new wallbox at home from 2024 will notice this. This is because the new Section 14a of the Energy Industry Act will then apply. This allows grid operators to intervene in the power supply of wallboxes and heat pumps for private individuals. If, for example, a large number of people in a street want to charge their car and heat with their heat pump at the same time, weak grids could be threatened with collapse. Grid operators may then intervene under the conditions mentioned above.
It is quite unlikely that there will actually be any noticeable restrictions. However, anyone who could theoretically be throttled will receive electricity at a reduced price. Households therefore generally pay less for electricity because they could theoretically help to stabilize the grid by reducing the power supply for electric cars and heat pumps in an extreme emergency.
There are also other ways for electric car batteries to relieve the grid. Not only can the local power grid be overloaded, but also the power lines across Germany. This happens, for example, when more wind power is generated near the North and Baltic Seas on stormy days than the lines can transport south. The consequence at the moment is often that wind turbines are switched off. In the future, however, it would also be conceivable for electric cars to be deliberately fully charged when a lot of electricity is generated in the north - and to return the electricity later when the grids have the capacity to transmit it again.
Some use cases can already be implemented with the right technical equipment and providers. If you want to monitor price trends on the electricity exchanges yourself and regulate your electricity consumption accordingly, you can get a dynamic electricity tariff from the Norwegian provider Tibber, for example. An app then shows how expensive electricity currently is.
In theory, some traditional energy suppliers such as Eon also already offer dynamic electricity tariffs. However, they are still rarely used. Many suppliers are actually hiding these tariffs from their customers because they are still unable to cope with the technical implementation.
The option of saving electricity costs with your own PV system by drawing less power from the grid is already quite widespread. For example, the Bavarian company Sonnen offers an intelligent wallbox that can maximize the consumption of solar power from your own roof. The British electricity provider Octopus Energy has a charging service called "Intelligent Octopus". Users can set at what time of day their car should be charged and to what percentage. With this boundary condition, the car then always charges at exactly the times when electricity is cheapest. Octopus Energy gives users a credit of between ten and 30 euros per month.
A similar offer is made by electricity provider The Mobility House. It has developed an app called Eyond, which connects to the electric car and starts or stops the charging process so that the car charges at the cheapest times. According to Managing Director Marcus Fendt, users save an average of between 200 and 300 euros per year. A car owner in Germany drives an average of 36 kilometers per day. According to Fendt, the vast majority of people can therefore "wait two days until their e-car battery is charged again." However, as with Octopus, users can specify that the battery should be charged to at least a certain level at a certain time. The start-up 1Komma5 Grad also enables solar power-optimized charging. The young company offers complete packages that include a solar system, an electricity storage unit, a heat pump, a wallbox and an energy management system.
However, it is important to think carefully about which offers and devices to use and whether the components can also be combined with products from other manufacturers in case of doubt. Fraunhofer expert Strüker warns: "Providers that already offer dynamic electricity tariffs or marketing options for e-car batteries can develop a great deal of market power if households tie themselves in by investing in provider-specific and non-interoperable devices and apps. It can later become difficult and expensive for customers to switch to more attractive competitors."
Up to now, offers have generally been based on so-called unidirectional charging: The electric car can absorb electricity, but cannot release it again. With bidirectional charging, higher revenues would be possible. This has already been tested in pilot projects. In a project with Audi, The Mobility House was able to generate 1556 euros per battery per year. According to Fendt, 650 euros could be paid out in future to customers who charge bidirectionally - more than twice as much as before.