What's bidirectional charging?

Bidirectional charging means you can charge your car 2 ways. Power goes from your house to your car via the charging station and the other way around. This also means you can store power, so you can use it for your cooktop or washing machine later at night. Thanks to this, you won't have to pay for expensive power from the grid.

Storing power via bidirectional charging has the following advantages:

• Do you have solar panels? You can store power you generate during the day in your car. That way, you can use your car as a type of at-home battery. You can power appliances at night with your own green energy, instead of gray power from the grid. This is better for the environment and your wallet.
• Because you can store energy during the day and use it at night, you can save a lot on your energy bill. Power is more expensive at night, because the demand exceeds the supply.
• When you store power, you prevent the local energy network from overloading. You can store energy cheaply during the day, when supply exceeds demand.

You need the right charging station and car for bidirectional charging. This is why: your household appliances use alternating current, whilst your electric car uses direct current. A charging station convert the alternating current from your house into direct current for your car. When you retrieve the power from your car, the charging station has to invert the direct current to alternating current again. Currently, not many charging stations and cars support this function.

Unfortunately, bidirectional charging isn't yet possible at Coolblue Energy. This is due to Dutch regulations and charging protocols, which means this feature isn't legally allowed yet. Once this is set by law by our government, you can easily charge bidirectionally with our BlueBuilt charging stations.