Polestar Starts V2G Trials in Europe and U.S.

Polestar commits to large-scale vehicle-to-grid (V2G) trials in both Europe and the U.S. as a way to attract more consumers to make the switch to battery-electric vehicles.

Nissan, long seen as a pioneer of V2G technology, has been offering this facility to consumers in tech-savvy global markets where both commercial and private BEV owners can earn income from trading unused energy back into the national electricity grid.

Now the Swedish automaker is joining stakeholders in the electricity grid sector with a V2G project in Gothenburg, Sweden, funded by the Swedish Innovation Agency Vinnova and piloting a fleet of Polestar 3 cars.

It seeks to find potential business models for the technology and trial several use cases that could operate at scale across several regions working with the Swedish National Grid authority Svenska kraftnät, local grid owner Göteborg Energi Nät, regional energy distributor Vattenfall Eldistribution, home charging provider Easee and research partner Chalmers University of Technology.

Running concurrently in the U.S., Polestar is collaborating with the California Energy Commission and the independent, non-profit energy research and development institute EPRI, on a pre-study funded by Vinnova in a bid to start V2G services in California.

The vehicles use bi-directional technology to not only charge but also discharge energy from their batteries back to the individual home or the electricity grid. To manage V2G integration, Polestar is developing a virtual power plant (VPP) that links all participating Polestar 3 cars connected to the grid. The cloud-based system calculates the collective capacity of connected batteries and initiates charging or discharging based on grid demand and battery longevity health. This could allow car owners to contribute to the energy transition while earning money from their unused electric energy.

The Gothenburg pilot project starts in the first half of 2024 and runs for two years while the California pre-study begins in December 2023 and runs until October 2024.

Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO, says: “Vehicle-to-grid has the potential to not only benefit individual customers, but whole communities. The average car is parked 90% of the time. With the bi-directional charging capabilities of Polestar 3 and the Polestar VPP, we can explore business models and community solutions that can unlock the true potential of V2G and enable owners to support the energy transition when they don’t need their car for driving.”