Ferroamp's first public V2G charger in operation

On Tuesday, the installation of Ferroamp’s first public V2G charger was completed. The three charging boxes are now located at the student village in Turku, where they are part of an EU project for cutting-edge energy efficiency solutions.

 – When we can use electric car batteries on a large scale in properties and for support services, it will provide completely new conditions in the electricity grid. With our DC charger, charging is faster for property owners and easier for car manufacturers because conversion and grid codes are handled by the Ferroamp system and no additional on-board charger is required, says Björn Jernström.

It was in February that Ferroamp presented its bidirectional V2G charger, which with good results has charged in and out of batteries on electric cars from Tesla, Polestar and Volkswagen, among others. Since then, field tests have started in closed environments and now for the first time in an environment where they are open to the public in a parking lot in an area with student housing in Turku, Finland.

The three chargers are part of the EU-funded innovation project RESPONSE with the aim of creating energy-positive neighbourhoods. The project also includes a PowerShare from Ferroamp, where the electrical systems in five buildings are connected to a DC grid to better utilise the energy from solar arrays and batteries locally.

There is still some way to go before V2G chargers reach the market. Above all, car manufacturers need to allow batteries to be discharged and their interfaces to be adapted to show negative charging power when the car discharges. The discharge function will therefore initially only be used for tests in the project.

– Ferroamp’s V2G charger is one of the cutting-edge technologies that we want to highlight and contribute to developing in the RESPONSE project. We will now connect them to the local DC grid and collect data from our own tests, says Samuli Ranta, Research leader at the research center of New Energy at the Turku University of Applied Sciences.