Octopus and BYD partner to offer electric vehicle home batteries

• Octopus and BYD deal allows customers to use their EV as a home battery
• Charge EV at night when costs are low, then power your home during the day
• Customers can sell excess power back to Octopus

BYD and Octopus plan to let customers use BYD EVs as driveable home batteries – credit: ltyuan Adobe

A new pilot scheme to be launched between Octopus Energy and Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD, will allow customers to use the parked EVs outside their homes as flexible home energy storage batteries.

The scheme means that Octopus customers will be able to take advantage of BYD EV’s bi-directional charging function, to use their EV as a battery to power their homes. 

Traditional EV charging technology sends energy in one direction, for example, from a power source to a car’s battery. However, bi-directional charging allows a vehicle to send energy for use by other devices – making your car a mobile power source.

This is just the latest in a line of partnerships between the two companies. For example, in 2023, Octopus customers were offered a special deal to purchase BYD’s ATTO 3 as part of a salary sacrifice program.

The latest scheme aims to enable customers to charge their EV batteries at night, when costs are usually lower. The stored power can then be used to power electrical appliances during the day, when tariffs are generally higher.

Savvy customers will also have the option to arbitrage the tariff cost differences at different times of day and pocket the difference through the Smart Export Guarantee (if they have an agreement in place with Octopus for solar panels). If not, customers can still use this new bolt-on package to receive free EV battery charging.

BYD and Octopus have announced that they will initially trial the scheme in Manchester at a new Greentech “superhub.” The hub has been set up by Kraken, the software division of energy giant Octopus Energy.

Using EVs as home batteries

Kraken has also partnered with Ford and Tesla to offer similar incentives to customers. The partnership with BYD  underlines the Chinese car giant’s intention to further expand its footprint in the UK, and build on its position as the leading EV maker in the world, having overtaken Tesla for EV sales in 2023.

Devrim Celal, Kraken’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), mentioned that only a very small number of electric cars are capable of vehicle-to-grid power transfers. However, more manufacturers are now moving to adopt the technology.

“We have about one million electric vehicles in the UK today; by 2050, we [will] have about 30 million of them,” explained Celal to the Telegraph.

“So when these [car] companies look at the energy system, they see an opportunity around consumer flexibility – that ability to choose when to charge the car and the value that creates,” he added.

The scheme will rely on using a relatively new technology known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. “Our conversations with them are about building that bridge between the automotive industry and the energy industry, where the automotive industry provides an ability to the energy industry to monitor the device in real-time and to be able to schedule it, control it to charge at the right time,” Celal explained.

If implemented at scale, this technology could help reduce the overall demand on the national grid, making our energy infrastructure more efficient and resilient.

“This is going to be quite a transformational technology once it’s in the market at scale,” said Celal.

A typical electric car could store between 70 and 80 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, while a home typically uses about 15 to 20kWh daily, he explained.

So, even if a customer decides to draw on their car’s battery, homeowners can ensure the vehicle has enough power by setting how much charge they need at certain times.

For example, Kraken explained that a homeowner could use special computer software to set a target of 80% by 7 am each morning. Kraken’s proprietary software would then either draw power or feed it to the grid, but only if the charging target was met.

Octopus, EDF, E.On, and Good Energy currently use Kraken’s software for retail customers in the UK. This software enables the link between the car and the household’s energy supplier.

Kraken said the Manchester superhub will also be used to trial other pioneering green technologies, including home batteries and heat pumps.