OVO V2G Group - current thoughts?

Hi ​@Sam72 ,

I don’t think many of the V2G Trialists are actively posting to the Forum anymore unfortunately - the last time I recall seeing one was probably well over six months ago.

AFAIK that particular Charger can’t be used for any Smart Charging setups outside of V2G so you’re probably best exploring the Fixed Rate Tariffs OVO has on offer.

I guess the question then is, which is better V2G or the Smart Charging i.e. is it better now to ditch the V2G?

Up to you really. OVO Charge Anytime does give a pretty sweet rate for EV Charging, but you’d have to ditch the V2G and probably swap Charger to make it work.

Hey ​@Sam72, 

​@Blastoise186 has already made some great points so far. I just wanted to add another couple of considerations. Charge Anytime isn’t a “tariff” but more of an add on to existing tariffs as long as you meet the compatibility. As you’ve said the charger isn’t compatible could your EV be a compatible model? 

You can use this form to check your compatibility - https://survey.zohopublic.eu/zs/5UDXSx

Keep us updated!

Thanks ​@Chris_OVO , but apparently not, I’ve got a Nissan Leaf!

No problem ​@Sam72! 

We have all our compatible chargers on our website here - https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/smart-charger. If you did decide to replace your charger in the future we’d be happy to help you with any questions you have 😊

A bit of additional information, I don't know if you had one of the Wallbox Quasar V2G units but they turned out to be not only very expensive (about £5k if I remember correctly) but also prone to failure. A small group of people have got together on SpeakEV to try and self repair the units but I don't think it is going that well. They all seem to have failed the same way so (as an electronics design engineer) I think that it had an inherent design fault which results in eventual failure so I wouldn't go buying one anyway. Replacing the many burnt out components is not going to fix the design flaw.

I also think there is a desgn philosophy failure with V2G in that even if people get home to connect their V2G by 4pm or even 5pm their journey would mean that the car battery is  probably more empty than full so not having a significant abilty to support the peak load. It seemed like a good idea but it has significant flaws which is why it appears to have fizzled.

Peter

Indeed. I still think V2G/V2H has a potential use case for the future, but it definitely needs a lot more time to bake in the oven before I’d want to see it attempted again out in the field.

One of the thoughts is that Home Batteries would be a more viable option, however, HBs are so much more expensive than vehicle batteries and companies seem to be taking interested home owners to the cleaners over pricing. It's also easier to charge HBs with solar as there is no minimum charging rate as there is with VBs.

Certainly more thought is required

Thanks for the responses guys. My V2G is an Indra machine; it’s working fine. ​@Peter E, you’re right that if you use the car daily it doesn’t have much time to support the peak grid load, I think the main benefit is actually if you haven’t used the car that day, or work slightly different hours. It’s frustrating that as it was part of an OVO test that it can’t be incorporated into the Charge Anytime, especially considering OVO’s fixed deals currently are uncompetitive. Needs a bit more thought, don’t want to give up on the V2G yet, but these decisions are economic.

​@Sam72 It does need the right incentive to get people to invest. However, I challenge anybody to tell me what the right tariff would be if you have solar, a heat pump, a battery, an EV, V2G and actually have it work reliably. Even then there are obstacles like someone is saying that Charge Anytimes stops them from preconditioning the car. We seem to have created a technological Gordian Knot for ourselves.

​@Peter E that would be tricky! My only point is, Ovo introduced the V2G, a group of us trialled it. It just seems odd to me that Ovo decided which V2G to go with and then subsequently introduces Charge Anytime and does not incorporate the V2G users - it’s an Indra machine, so difficult to understand why it wasn’t included by design into the compatibility group. I think there should be tariffs to encourage solar, battery and V2G, as broader rollouts of these technologies have the potential to ease grid demand.

It wouldn’t be the first time that OVO have chosen a product and then decided it wasn’t compatible later on. In my early EV days in 2021, after a lot of research, I decided to go with the EO Pro charge point and by the time I ordered the installation OVO said it wasn’t compatible any more. Now, to be honest, it saved me a lot of grief later on as the EO Pro was about the worst possible charge point you could have had. I won’t go into the details. In the end I built my own dumb 3.5kW CP (I’m on a looped supply) and went to Agile Octopus with the car’s timers to control everything. It’s simple, cheap and relaible.

I never did think V2G was viable from the beginning on the basis that the battery in cars is about £6k and it wouldn’t take a lot of degradation from the V2G use to make the whole thing uneconomic. I’d have to admit I can’t say if there would have been any significant degradation but it seemed too much of a risk to even contemplate doing that for any car. For the record my Zoe ZE40 can’t anyway. When car batteries are cheaper, when the V2G is a similar price to a normal CP, when there are no issues with compatibility, tariffs, integration and relaibilty then maybe, on a large scale, it may work.

Peter

​@Peter E , for what it’s worth, I’ve been doing V2G for over three years now and have not seen any noticeable degradation in battery life.

That's good feedback. I've not heard that from anybody else but probably because so few people have done that. Useful information. Thank you.

Morning ​@Sam72 and ​@Peter E,

There’s some really interesting points made around battery degradation so thank you for the insight and feedback 😊

There has been quite a lot of discussion regarding battery degradation with vehicle batteries and V2G. Lithium Ion cells degrade in various ways. There is calendar age where you lose capacity over time rather than usage. There is usage degradation where the total energy charge/discharged causes degradation. There is the time that the cells are kept at maximum voltage at high temperatures which is related to calendar ageing. There is the rate of charge/discharge where high rates can cause additional degradation.

I would say that all of these, individually is quite small but the sum of these together tends to cause a degradation of somewhere between 1-2% per year for wet Lion cells. LFP cells have a lower rate of degradation but have a lower energy density.

With V2G charge/discharge rates are somewhat lower than that when driving so it could well be expected that the V2G use of a car's batteries doesn't significantly reduce the life of the battery.

The V2G concept is more economical using car batteries as they used to cost about £150/kWh and are now cheaper whereas companies are still charging £4-500/kWh for house batteries for a whole system installed. There was a whole thing about V2G solving the problem of peak power production and high costs associated with that about 2/3 years ago but it has all but vanished recently and I think the issue is that it rarely works in practice.

Peter

Thanks for sharing ​@Peter E!

I know me personally I don’t have room in this house to install a battery system but an external V2G setup could work for me. If you use a battery within the correct parameters you can normally get a great life span from it. I think I need to do some more reading this eve on the current state of V2G in 2025 😃

I thought the V2G was restricted to Chademo connecters but Wallbox now do the Quasar 2 which is for CCS connectors and with the right tariff you could have an EV and do some neat import/export with differential rates to make it pay. It just needs the right lifestyle to allow that to happen. Just be sure to run a realistic cost model before buying as they are £6k + fitting and find out what your DNO and your connection will allow you to import/export.

I've done a simulation for a home battery and because we are careful with what we use in the peak (all that restraint that  OVO taught us for Power Move rewards) we can only save about £80 a year (for a retired couple) at best so not enough to do that.

We were on the original V2G indra trial.  It was great during lockdown, as the car was sat there all day!  Not so much after that, and we finally gave the indra box away a year ago, replacing it with a home battery system.  Gave as there’s little 2nd hand value to them, as indra don’t connect anything they haven’t installed.  This was partly as we anticipated selling the leaf, and partly because we wanted more PV, which is easy to integrate into a home battery system.  Why not have both?  It’s simpler to keep under the 8kW max export that we’re allowed (4 from fit, additional 4 from g99).  If we kept the v2g unit it would be way more complex.  Mrs robl is happy, as that chademo connector kept sticking, or the unit sometimes didn’t work quite right.

We didn’t see more than average car battery degradation after 3 years of use - I understand that’s largely because the leaf has poor software, and left to its own devices on a granny charger/similar it will just charge up to full and sit there, the worst possible thing to do.  In contrast the V2G unit rarely pushes the battery out of its 20-80% comfort zone.  
I’m hoping car integrated AC chargers to be bidirectional one day, that will really cause an uptake in v2g.  I’m not sure if it will happen; as time goes on, home batts get cheaper and cheaper, £1800 for 15kWh now on fogstar (UK).

Thanks ​@RobL 

Loads of interesting information there. I wasn't aware that you could export 8kW (4+4) with two schemes though. For some reason the DNO seem to be very cagey about exports over 3.68kW when in fact it reduces the currents flowing in the substation LV circuits (ie it cancels out the currents pulled by your neighbours) and hence the overall losses.

You made a good point about circumstances changing your arrangements which is something that is not often thought about. People set about trying to set up or optimise a particular system and then life forces a change on you even to the extent that you have to move house. Even a change in tariff or the introduction of a new supplier (like Tomato) changes the game. And then you find you don't have a compatible charge point or car.

I'm not holding my breath on V2G though  It's a simple concept that could well but there doesn't seem to be many willing participants at the moment. Time will tell as the EV fleet expands.

Peter