Electric vehicle drivers testing new V2H (vehicle-to-home) charging technology are saving around £200 a month on their energy bills while also optimising renewable energy usage.

EV owners can effectively charge their car with off-peak energy and then discharge it back during peak times to power their homes

The tests, run by EV and smart energy technology business Indra, are said to be the world’s largest V2H trials and see early adopters reap the benefits of the firm’s bidirectional charging technology.

Billed as pioneering, the firm’s bidirectional V2H charger has been designed to access surplus energy stored in an EV battery. Not only can this technology be used to lower energy bills, it can also help reduce demand on the grid at peak times.

It means that EV owners can effectively charge their car with off-peak energy – not only cheaper but also making use of higher volumes of renewable energy sources – and then discharge energy back from their vehicle during peak times to power their homes.

The Indra charger also brings further benefits from their solar matching capability. Rather than exporting electricity to the grid when solar panel generation is at its highest but demand low, the charger diverts the energy into the EV’s battery, where it can be stored for use later.

Participant Carl Nicholson has already reported “massive” savings after signing up straight after the trials were announced in April. He has two Nissan Leafs and three solar arrays that deliver between four and five megawatt hours a year, ensuring he’s perfectly placed to make use of the bespoke qualities of the Indra charger.

“My first full month’s electric bill since setting up the V2H is going to be about £30. Before that I was paying between £130 and £200 a month, depending on the time of year. That was even with the solar panels contributing – and before the recent energy tariff rises,” he explained. “This is state of the art! I’m just plugging in the cars and the charger does it all for you, there’s no programming as the software sorts it out.

“The only time I need to worry is if someone forgets to plug it in!”

Indra’s trials are expected to bring meaningful real-world data of user behaviours, cost savings, energy performance and scheduling optimisation, based on a wide range of use cases from across the UK. Already, over 2,000 UK residents have registered their interest in participating online.

Mike Schooling, Indra founder and CTO, said: “As we grow the number of trial participants later this year, we will gather even more varied use cases as well as start to see similarities in behaviour. This data will help us to refine our bidirectional charging proposition so that we can bring more of this game-changing technology to future customers.”