DELAWARE - The University of Delaware (UD), Exelon Corporation/Delmarva Power, and collaborators have released a new report showing that electric vehicles equipped with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology can earn thousands for owners.Â
The report is the outcome of a pilot program announced in 2024 by UD, and completed at the offices of Delmarva Power, which is part of Exelon Corporation, to confirm the value of V2G services to the grid.
The collaborators report that a V2G-enabled passenger electric vehicle (EV) could earn as much as $3,359 per year, based on 2021-2025 market prices, for storing and supplying energy to the electric grid during times of need. Heavier vehicles could earn over $9,000 per year, per vehicle.
"Whether it could scale cost-effectively was an open question, and we’ve proven that it can—with the right combination of policies, standards and technology," said UD Professor Willett Kempton, who invented the V2G technology with colleagues at the University nearly 30 years ago.
Kempton also mentions how EVs are earning money by competing with legacy generators and when you’re participating in the market instead of a fuel-burning generator, you’re also reducing pollution, which makes the technology both economically smart and functionally sound.
So far, changes to V2G-enabled vehicles have been done by retrofitting existing EVs to accommodate the V2G technology but now with lower-cost standards, Kempton is looking at how this becomes adopted in many cars and many charging stations.
"We’ll need at least a few car companies and charging station companies to mass produce this V2G equipment, and to deploy the technology into vehicles in the factory," Kempton said. "If it is designed in, and mass produced, it’s incredibly cheap, especially when you compare it to the potential yearly revenue."
