Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Power United States

Free Bi-Directional EV Chargers Tested to Improve Massachusetts Power Grid (masscec.com) 59

Posted by EditorDavid from the grid-luck dept.
Somewhere on America's eastern coast, there's an economic development agency in Massachusetts promoting green energy solutions. And Monday the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (or MassCEC) announced "a first-of-its-kind" program to see what happens when they provide free electric vehicle chargers to selected residents, school districts, and municipal projects.

The catch? The EV chargers are bi-directional, able "to both draw power from and return power to the grid..." The program hopes to "accelerate the adoption of V2X technologies, which, at scale, can lower energy bills by reducing energy demand during expensive peak periods and limiting the need for new grid infrastructure." This functionality enables EVs, including electric buses and trucks, to provide backup power during outages and alleviate pressure on the grid during peak energy demand. These bi-directional chargers will enable EVs to act as mobile energy storage assets, with the program expected to deliver over one megawatt of power back to the grid during a demand response event — enough to offset the electricity use of 300 average American homes for an hour. "Virtual Power Plants are the future of our electrical grid, and I couldn't be more excited to see this program take off," said Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper. "We're putting the power of innovation directly in the hands of Massachusetts residents. Bi-directional charging unlocks new ways to protect communities from outages and lower costs for families and public fleets...."

Additionally, the program will help participants enroll in existing utility programs that offer compensation to EV owners who supply power back to the grid during peak times, helping participants further lower their electricity costs. By leveraging distributed energy resources and reducing grid strain, this program positions Massachusetts as a national leader in clean energy innovation.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Free Bi-Directional EV Chargers Tested to Improve Massachusetts Power Grid More

Free Bi-Directional EV Chargers Tested to Improve Massachusetts Power Grid

Comments Filter:

  • ... on EV battery life? Is "free charging" enough to offset that?

    • Fuck all. The demand rate being discussed is tiny. Maybe your EV only lasts for 500000miles instead of 550000miles. Either way it's going to be turned into a small recycled cube before the battery is dead. The idea of being afraid of your battery longevity really needs to die. We have the data that proves they aren't like your smartphone.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Maybe your EV only lasts for 500000miles

        Your EV. My ICE vehicles aren't having any problems reaching 500k.

        • Your EV. My ICE vehicles aren't having any problems reaching 500k.

          Some EVs have no problem reaching 500k either. But EVs ultimately are just for normal people, like the overwhelming majority of people who send their cars to the wreaking yard with 200k miles on them.

          Data's in, EVs last as long as ICE vehicles. But look maybe EVs aren't for a special snowflake like you who does truly extraordinary things with their car.

          By the way we have data on ICE vehicles too. 154,200 miles is the average mileage received over 50000 cars analysed in 2023 by Junk Car Medics - the largest

          • So, ideally....you get a free charger and all you have to do is unplug your car during an outage.....and bingo....best of all worlds?

            • So, ideally....you get a free charger and all you have to do is unplug your car during an outage.....and bingo....best of all worlds?

              I'm assuming most EVs with V2L capabilities let you disable the feature. So yeah, free charger. Neat.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mspohr ( 589790 )

            I have an old ICE car that has 200,000 miles and is still running. However, maintenance is expensive with lots of failures of parts related to the ICE power train.
            I'm waiting for the engine or transmission to fail completely to junk it.
            My EVs, OTOH, have more than 150,000 miles and zero dollars maintenance expense (other than tires and wiper blades.).

            • Yep that's kind of the thing, most ICE engines aren't scrapped because of complete power train failure. They are full of minor failures that stress the owners out to the point of giving up.

              My last car was scrapped because of a fuel pump failure. The engine itself was fine. I just had enough of fixing it. It was scrapped with 318,000km on it (just shy of 200k miles). The thing is despite a fully working engine the only offers I got from it were from a scrap yard. I even tried selling the car for $500 with n

    • What if the cost to charge a battery is sooooo tiny compared to the cost impact to the life of a battery being used to supplement the grid like this? (Multi thousand dollar battery divided by 500 or a thousand or so charge cycles...)

    • ... on EV battery life? Is "free charging" enough to offset that?

      Generally shelf life rather than cycle count is dominate factor. Within shelf life bucket battery temperature has a massive impact on shelf life. Personally I wouldn't participate in this if I were ever in a position to do so due to unnecessary wear on the vehicles high current electronics. My opinion would be different if an external DC charger were used.

  • Is there a reason the summary couldn't have just accurately stated the location?

    • Re:"Somewhere on America's eastern coast..." (Score:4, Funny)

      by ZombieCatInABox ( 5665338 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @01:43PM (#65974738)

      Massachusetts.

      It was easy to miss though. It's only mentionned twice in the first line of the summary.

    • Slashdot has an international audience -- Australia, the U.K., India...

      So I didn't want to assume those readers knew the locations of all 50 U.S. states.

      • Slashdot has an international audience -- Australia, the U.K., India...
        So I didn't want to assume those readers knew the locations of all 50 U.S. states.

        Then North Eastern U.S. would have been better, and way more accurate, than "somewhere on America's eastern coast" - which is about 2,000 miles long.

        • That's sort of the point, though. I wanted to hint at the small geographic size of the state, by describing it as "somewhere" (using its own humble local development agency). That's part of the story -- that what could be a promising program is happening at the local level. It makes it that much more impressive that this program is the first of its kind.

          It needs to be clear that this isn't all of America, but just a very small pilot test to gather data on whether it makes things better or worse. (Mass

  • Yeah, maybe (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @01:10PM (#65974718)

    This might be a good idea, but I see two potential problems
    What happens if you need your EV in an emergency and the battery was drained to power the grid?
    How does it affect battery life?
    Also, does the utility pay for the storage or reduce electric rates for those who participate?
    I'm not totally opposed, it might actually be a good idea

    • Even if your battery is not completely dead, what if it's at 40% and you planned to visit your parents, and you know that 40% is not enough to get back? The battery life degradation is also an important aspect I didn't consider before reading your comment.

      • Do your parents not have electricity?

        Battery life degradation is more or less an irrelevance, given how long batteries last now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sethra ( 55187 )

          > Do your parents not have electricity?

          So you're fine with transferring the cost burden to your parents for the power pulled by the utility company in another county or even state so you can get back home again?

          Electricity isn't free.

          • You mean would I be happy to pay back my parents a bit of cash so I can charge my car for free most of the year? Sounds like an excellent deal and one I'd take if I had a car or parents to visit.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Sethra ( 55187 )

              It makes no practical sense. You charge your EV from utility power which you pay for. Then you let the utility pull that power back from your EV and then pay again to recharge your EV to make up for the power the utility took.

              You're basically double paying for your electricity. The power company will consider you an awesome customer.

    • What happens if you need your EV in an emergency and the battery was drained to power the grid?

      a) Literally not the scenario. Frequency control services do not drain much energy, they require a lot of power though. The purpose here is to stabilise grids while generation resumes. No one is draining their car.

      b) This tech exists. Literally every implementation is left 100% in the user's control. If you don't want your car to discharge below a threshold you can bet both your kidneys safely that you can simply set that option when you plug your car in. Your car controls its charge/discharge capacity. The

      • I don't know honestly a typical car battery stores a shitload of energy (the Brisbane cyclone in 2025 saw a friend of mine run her entire house for 3 whole days on a BYD Atto 3 including running the AC, fridge, etc, and the car was still over half full when the power was restored).

        I don't think people realise how just mindblowingly inefficient cars are at transportation. They're very isolated from it pouring a bunch of flammable fuel they never even see through a nozzle.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You can set a limit, say never go below 70% or 200 miles range.

      Effect on battery depends on a number of factors, but what it really boils down to is how much you get paid from it. If it's enough that it more than offsets and possible degradation, then it's worth it because chances are the battery will outlive the car.

    • What happens if you need your EV in an emergency and the battery was drained to power the grid?

      I had a friend once ask me my why I haven't installed an inverter in my Chevy Bolt. It's got a 66 kWh battery that would ostensibly be great for supplying backup power to my home. My response: Because in the event of a power failure, I'll need the car to go fill up the gas cans for my generator (and also other trips that involve using my car as... a car).

      Running down the battery in your EV with it tethered to your house is probably a fine idea if it's a spare car, but in this economy, who can afford a spa

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I had a friend once ask me my why I haven't installed an inverter in my Chevy Bolt. It's got a 66 kWh battery that would ostensibly be great for supplying backup power to my home. My response: Because in the event of a power failure, I'll need the car to go fill up the gas cans for my generator (and also other trips that involve using my car as... a car).

        Running down the battery in your EV with it tethered to your house is probably a fine idea if it's a spare car, but in this economy, who can afford a spare

        • The EV I have (a Chevy Bolt) doesn't do V2L, so the solution to use it as backup power involves connecting a standard 12V inverter to the vehicle's existing 12V system. You can safely draw somewhere around 1 kW this way. Yeah, that'd keep the fridge/lights/phone chargers running, but here in Florida not having air conditioning is almost as bad as having all your food spoil. The other issue, as I'd already mentioned, is having the car tethered to the house means anytime the car isn't at home (such as... g

    • Here in the UK, you can lease a BYD car for something like £300/month, along with an in/out charge point attached to your house. You have to plug it in 20 times per month (so pretty much every night, I guess), but in return, you pay *zero* to drive the car. That is, all the charging and discharging of the battery will be entirely free to you (as will servicing, and I think tyres). I don't know the specifics, but there is some sort of SLA that says it won't discharge below a certain amount.

      The £3

  • Today, the sales brochure reads: "This functionality enables EVs, including electric buses and trucks, to provide backup power during outages and alleviate pressure on the grid during peak energy demand."

    Tomorrow, the Federal law reads: "This functionality mandates that all EVs, including electric buses and trucks, provide backup power during outages and alleviate pressure on the grid during peak energy demand."

    Just in case those falling for the free-vertising, still haven't learned their lesson.

    • Funny thing is that this increased demand on the grid will probably come from people all ramping up the charging of their EV's overnight for places that have cheaper power overnight. You're going to be draining participating EVs batteries to charge other EVs batteries. This can't be in any way an efficient way to be doing things. Multiple sources of power losses, Transmission to the home loss, Charging loss, discharging and conversion to grid power loss then re-transmission loss

    • This administration doesn't even want people to buy EVs, so that's kind of a stretch. If you wanted to make it more believable, you should've said California.

    • This is just some dumb shit random misplaced "teh bubbmint" bullshit.

      Also the first, second, fourth, sixth and 8th amendments are under attack right now and not from the people who generally thing EVs are quite neat.

  • I have no desire to add any renewable power generation devices to my home. It was never designed with that in mind, starting with the siting. It will never be optimal. However, I am more than ready to be a consumer of renewable energy, the economics are very compelling. Installing bi-directional batteries, however, will have a negligible impact on my home -- maybe take up some space on my garage wall, that's about it. But having backup power right at hand is a great incentive. And, distributing power storag

    • If you DIY'd this you'd probably have half the hardware since it seems like many of even the most inexpensive grid tie inverter/chargers have a solar controller in them. I got a very inexpensive device with a 3600W 120V inverter which also does battery charging (~24V lithium, flooded, or whatever with a custom profile) and it has grid tie with boost. It doesn't do any of the intelligent stuff that would allow you to participate in a VPP, but it does have external control so that could be retrofit even onto

  • Well it makes perfect sense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Casandro ( 751346 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @02:00PM (#65974760)

    There are comparatively huge batteries just sitting around doing nothing. The impact on their life is tiny and the metal casing they sit in is going to have turned into rust long before they become unusable.

    Now of course the sensible way to go over this would be to make those people participate in the profits the grid provider gets from storing cheap and free electricity and selling it again when it's expensive, but this is end-term capitalism.

    • There are comparatively huge batteries just sitting around doing nothing.

      The battery in my EV isn't doing "nothing", it's doing exactly what I expect it to be doing - storing the energy I put into it until I need to drive the car somewhere. Making it less effective at that purpose is not an improvement.

      • Well but typically those batteries are _extremely_ oversized. You could easily get around with just half of a full charge.

        Also since cars mostly stand around parking, you could easily get a few charge cycles out of them so you can earn more money.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't know about this this program, but for other similar VPP programs I've read about, you get somewhere between bulk generator and retail power rates. To make an example, if the bulk generation rate is .03/kwh (what they're paying generators) and retail is .15/kwh (what you buy electricity at), in the case of your V2x giving power to the grid you might be paid something like .05/kwh. If you're somewhere where electricity is expensive (e.g. California with retail at .53+/kwh) it can be worth it to do th

  • Actual data from the FAQ (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SubmergedInTech ( 7710960 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @02:09PM (#65974772)

    From https://www.masscec.com/massce... [masscec.com], they expect to draw 3kW - 10kW for 3 hours, for a total draw of 9 kWh - 30 kWh.

    We have a Kona EV with a 65 kWh battery, which we limit to 80% charge to maximize battery life. Their expected draw is 14% - 46% of battery life. With our existing V2L adapter, the Kona can specify the minimum battery level where it will cut off. If we set it to cut off at 60%, then they could have 20% of the battery, but no more. 60% is enough for all our expected driving for a couple days, so I'd be comfortable with that. But also, odds are that the power drain event will be in the evening, and there'll be plenty of time overnight to recharge back to 80%.

    Lithium batteries don't like being charged all the way to 100% or drained to 0%, but running them back and forth between 60-80% won't measurably damage them for thousands of cycles.

    If the software were better, we'd be able to say, "We want to be back at 80% at 5AM. And in any case, we want to keep at least 60% of our battery for our own needs - driving, V2L for our own house in a power failure, etc. Within those constraints, you're welcome to the rest of the power, but we're selling it at $0.60/kWh. If you *really* want power, we'll go from 60% to 40%, but it'll cost you $1.00/kWh below 60%." And then the grid could decide whether it's willing to pay our price, and how much it wants.

  • Requires car with vehicle-to-load (Score:3)

    by pauljlucas ( 529435 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @02:09PM (#65974774) Homepage Journal
    You can't just do this with any EV. The car itself has to have the "vehicle-to-load" capability that's not yet universal on all EVs.
    • Vehicle to load is a different beast, you need an adapter to access the AC power. V2G works via a bi-directional charger

  • Somewhere on America's eastern coast, there's an economic development agency in Massachusetts ...

    Sounds like someone doesn't know where Massachusetts is. :-)

  • Virtual Power Plant (Score:3)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Saturday February 07, 2026 @06:55PM (#65975178) Homepage Journal

    I have Powerwalls, and also happen to live in Massachusetts. I participate in the virtual power plant program, where the batteries dump to the grid for an hour or two during peak demand in the summer (typically 5-7pm on hot days). I get paid nearly $1000/year for each Powerwall. Car batteries are much larger. I would love to be able to have my EVs participate in this, as well, but our cars don't support bidirectional charging. If they did, we would love to be part of this, assuming the terms are similar.

  • They took the long way around reinventing the trolleybus, but worse.

Slashdot Top Deals

It was pity stayed his hand. "Pity I don't have any more bullets," thought Frito. -- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein

Close