Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicles (EVs) are taking over our roads faster than ever. Global sales are set to top 20 million in 2025, meaning more than one in four cars sold worldwide will be electric. And in the UK, the countdown is on: no new petrol or diesel cars will be sold after 2030.
Most people see the move to EVs as a way to reduce emissions and improve air quality in urban areas. But what if your EV could do even more? What if it could power your neighbourhood, support the transition to renewable energy, and even reduce your energy bills? It might sound far-fetched, but it is already happening.
It’s a balancing act
The clean energy transition is accelerating. The International Energy Agency expects the world to add 4,600 gigawatts of renewable power by 2030, roughly equal to the combined generation capacity of China, the European Union, and Japan. But there’s a catch. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. When renewables drop, we still need backup power to balance the grid and meet demand. At the moment, gas peaker plants, which act as fast-start backup generators, fire up to fill the gap.
The trouble is, gas peakers are expensive to run and heavily reliant on fossil fuels. So how do we balance a renewable grid without constantly leaning on gas? The answer lies in smarter solutions such as battery energy storage systems and a new kind of network called the virtual power plant (VPP).
What exactly is a VPP?
Think of a VPP as a giant digital power station made up of lots of smaller parts. Instead of relying on a single large facility, such as a gas or coal-fired power plant, a VPP connects thousands of smaller energy assets such as rooftop solar panels, home batteries, and electric vehicles. When the grid is under pressure, these devices can be called upon to reduce their usage for a short time or to send power back to the grid. And the best part is, if you own one of these assets, you can get paid for taking part. With growing interest from both consumers and investors, the VPP market is expanding fast, valued at around $1.42 billion in 2023 and expected to reach nearly $24 billion by 2032.
The power sitting on your driveway
But how does this work in practice? Can your small car really help power the electricity grid? Well, your car battery is capable of more than you might think. If you needed it to, your EV could most likely power your entire home for up to four days.
That’s because most electric cars in the UK today have a battery capacity of around 40 kilowatt hours (kWh). Given that the average UK household uses about 8 kWh of electricity per day, the maths checks out.
If you fancy trying it out, you probably won’t be able to just yet, as it only works if your car battery is capable of bi-directional charging. That means it can send electricity back to your home, or the grid, as well as draw from it.
Discharging to the grid is a concept known as vehicle-to-grid, or V2G. Octopus Energy was the first company in the UK to launch a mass-market V2G tariff. Their Power Pack lets drivers plug in, set a preferred charge level, and let the system handle the rest. The car charges when energy is greenest and cheapest, and exports power back to the grid when it’s needed most. Some customers have even been able to charge their cars for free as a result.
In one of National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios, 5.5 million EVs using V2G charging could provide up to 38 gigawatts of flexible power. That extra capacity would be enough to meet all additional peak electricity demand in the UK’s highest-demand outlook for 2050.
Could your car reduce your energy bill?
Here’s where things get interesting. Even though the UK is producing more low-cost renewable power, energy prices remain tied to gas. Why? Because of something called marginal pricing.
Under this system, the market price of electricity is set by the most expensive source of generation used to meet demand. In practice, that’s almost always gas. So even if renewables meet most of our demand, as long as there’s a little gas in the mix, the price stays high.
This is where virtual power plants (VPPs) come in. A VPP connects thousands of small energy assets such as home batteries or electric cars (V2G) and coordinates them to act like one large power plant. By feeding energy back to the grid when demand peaks, these systems reduce the need to turn on costly gas plants.
Less gas not only means lower carbon emissions but also more affordable electricity for everyone. And if your EV is part of that network, you could even get paid for the power your car gives back.
Powering the grid of the future
It’s simple in theory. We need renewable energy to reach net zero, but their intermittency means we’re still dependent on gas. By reducing this dependency through energy storage and virtual power plants, we can cut emissions and bring down electricity prices. The more EVs we plug into the grid, the more flexibility we’ll build. The technology is here. The question is, how long until every driveway becomes part of the energy system?
