So it’s a good moment to consider where vehicle-to-grid concepts first emerged and to see in Utrecht how far they’ve come. “We want to predict where we need to build the next electric charging station.” And part of the change involves extending the city’s EV-charging network.

“We wanted to change,” says Eelco Eerenberg, one of Utrecht’s deputy mayors and alderman for development, education, and public health. This initiative is taking place in an environment where everyday citizens want to travel without causing emissions and are increasingly aware of the value of renewables and energy security. Utrecht, a largely bicycle-propelled city of 350,000 just south of Amsterdam, has become a proving ground for the bidirectional-charging techniques that have the rapt interest of automakers, engineers, city managers, and power utilities the world over.

Given the rapid uptake of electric vehicles, many people are thinking hard about how to make the best use of all that rolling battery power. Volkswagen, Nissan, and Hyundai have moved to produce the kinds of cars that can use such bidirectional chargers-alongside similar vehicle-to- home technology, whereby your car can power your house, say, during a blackout, as promoted by Ford with its new F-150 Lightning. Unlike those you may have grown accustomed to seeing, many of these stations don’t just charge electric cars-they can also send power from vehicle batteries to the local utility grid for use by homes and businesses.ĭebates over the feasibility and value of such vehicle-to-grid technology go back decades. Hundreds of charging stations for electric vehicles dot Utrecht’s urban landscape in the Netherlands like little electric mushrooms.

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