Indra EV charger saves drivers £200 on monthly energy bills

EV drivers have reported savings of up to £200 in a pilot trial of Indra’s bidirectional electric vehicle charger.

The EV charging and smart home technology business, Indra, has revealed early results from the first users of its pioneering V2H (Vehicle-to-Home) charging technology, with participants saving £200 on their monthly energy bills.

This has been made possible by Indra’s state-of-the-art, bidirectional V2H Charger, which has been designed to access surplus energy from the car. Not only can this technology be used to lower energy bills, it can also help reduce demand on the grid at peak times. EV owners are effectively able to charge their car with off-peak energy, which is often not only cheaper but also derived from higher volumes of renewable energy sources, and then discharge energy back from their vehicle during peak times to power their homes.

Further benefits can also be accessed thanks to the solar matching capability of Indra’s sophisticated V2H charger. Rather than exporting this electricity to the grid when solar panel generation is at its highest but demand low, the Indra charger diverts the energy into the EV’s battery, where it can be stored for use later.

One of the first to sign up, Carl Nicholson, has already seen significant reduction in his grid energy use since he started using his Indra Vehicle-to-Home Charger at his Sedbury home in May this year. With two Nissan LEAFs already on his drive and three solar arrays that deliver between four and five megawatt hours a year, Carl was perfectly placed to make use of the unique qualities of the Indra charger.

“The savings I’m making are massive,” explained Carl. “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. 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.  You just have to plug the car in when it’s at home – it’s not hard. The only time I need to worry is if someone forgets to plug it in!”

In April 2022, Indra announced plans to run the world’s largest V2H trial to build on the pre-trial users and gain a wider range of use cases from across the UK. The trial is designed to gather meaningful real-world data of user behaviours, cost savings, energy performance and scheduling optimisation.  Already, over 2,000 UK residents have registered their interest in participating at www.indra.co.uk/v2h.

Mike Schooling, Indra Founder and CTO, said: “These initial customer results show that Indra’s pioneering Vehicle-to-Home charger can significantly reduce a customer’s domestic energy bills as well as maximise renewable energy choices.  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.”