The project centres on Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) charging, meaning the controlled return of energy from vehicle batteries back into the electricity grid. This allows electric vehicles not only to store electricity but also to feed it back when needed. Vattenfall explains that ‘in the trial, the cars will serve as flexible energy storage, helping to keep electricity supply and demand better balanced.’
The pilot project targets up to 80 selected households that own a Kia EV9 or Hyundai Ioniq 5. Participants will receive a bidirectional charging station, including installation, for the duration of the project. During the six-month trial, Vattenfall will reimburse electricity charged at home up to a maximum of €500.
According to Vattenfall, the field trial will examine how intelligent and automated control of charging and discharging processes can improve electricity use efficiency, ‘for example by deploying it during times of scarcity.’
Kia and Hyundai are supplying the charging technology and the accompanying app. Vattenfall will control the charging and discharging processes to ensure the vehicles automatically respond to electricity demand. In practice, this means the cars can feed electricity back into the grid between 4 pm and 9 pm, when demand is at its highest.
For participants, daily vehicle use will remain largely unchanged. Users can define their own preferences, including departure times and minimum battery charge levels.
“Electric cars are stationary for most of the day,” said Jeroen van Loon, Director of Customer Solution Development at Vattenfall Netherlands. “At the same time, they have a large battery: whereas a home battery is usually around 10 kilowatt-hours, an electric car can easily have 50 to 60 kilowatt-hours of storage. In this pilot, we are exploring how we can unlock the flexibility of this new generation of cars and gain experience with an energy system that can better adapt to supply and demand.”
Projects involving bidirectional charging are now becoming increasingly common in the Netherlands—including in connection with carsharing. The best-known initiative is called Utrecht Energized and includes 50 bidirectional charging electric cars, with plans to expand to 500. Eindhoven also aims to stabilise the grid using bidirectional carsharing cars. Initially, Hyundai was even planned as the vehicle partner for Utrecht, but the project managers later switched to Renault.
Meanwhile, the Hyundai Motor Group has approached the new technology through smaller projects but announced at the end of 2025 that it would accelerate the introduction of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) services at group level (i.e., Hyundai and Kia) in South Korea, parts of Europe, and the USA. The Netherlands was also mentioned as a target market in this context.
Vattenfall itself is also involved in another V2G test project with Volkswagen and other partners in Sweden. The scope includes 200 electric VWs and 200 bidirectional chargers from Ambibox.
nltimes.nl, group.vattenfall.com
