All Tesla vehicles are now capable of bidirectional charging (V2X) thanks to an impressive Powerwall competitor, Sigenergy, which can include a universal bidirectional DC charger.
V2X, or bidirectional charging, is becoming a fairly common feature for electric vehicles.
Whether it’s in a reasonably low capacity to power tools and other equipment on the go (V2X), or with higher capacities to power a home (V2H) or send electricity back into the grid for money (V2G).
As a leader in electric vehicles, Tesla was long seen as being reticent in adopting the technology.
Today, Cybertruck is the only Tesla vehicle that officially supports bidirectional charging and it only works with Tesla’s own Powershare home solution, which still has limitations years after launching. For example, it still doesn’t work with Powerwalls.
And yet, I was surprised to see yesterday a Tesla Model Y send electricity back into a house for the first time.
My friend Sylvain Juteau, President of Roulez Electrique, was showing me the latest addition to his Trois-Rivieres charging station: the Sigenergy DC charging and ESS system. You can watch our video of our full walkthrough of the system here:
I had already heard a bit about Sigenergy and how they were gaining a foothold in the home energy storage market in countries like Australia.
Tesla has been dominating the home energy storage system for years with the Powerwall, but now its supremacy is being challenged, and I’m starting to understand why.
This device is what the Tesla Powerwall was supposed to be.
In 2016, when discussing the upcoming Powerwall 2, CEO Elon Musk stated that it would feature an “integrated Powerwall 2.0 battery and Tesla charger.”
The Powerwall 2 came and went, and never had a charger integrated.
Tesla is currently on the Powerwall 3, which features some significant improvements in power capacity and solar inverter integration, but it doesn’t have an integrated EV charger.
Sigenergy’s device combines all components into a single, stackable, and expandable system with an incredible user interface.
For a few years now, the industry has had the ISO 15118 international standard for vehicle-to-grid (V2G), and Sigenergy has built a fully certified bidirectional DC charger module that fits with its modular energy storage system.
The system consists of stackable 8 kWh battery modules, with a top module that includes a solar inverter and serves as the brain of the system.
Between them, you can fit this new bidirectional DC charger module. With 3 battery modules (24 kWh), it looks like this:
The system can provide up to 25 kW DC fast charging, allowing you to charge at a rate of 25 kW at home.
It bypasses the onboard charger in your electric vehicle, just like public DC fast-charging stations.
At 25 kW, which is achievable with 3 battery modules and solar, it is certainly not as fast as most public fast-charging stations, but it is a lot more than the generally ~7 kW capacity of a level 2 home charging station.
And the killer feature is that this module is capable of bidirectional charging so it can not only DC charge an EV, but it can also pull DC power from an EV.
The device is available with both CCS and NASC connectors, but bidirectional charging utilizes the CCS protocol.
It means that even Tesla cars with NASC connectors and CCS modules (2019-2021, depending on the model) can use the bidirectional. To be clear, this is unofficially supported by Tesla – meaning that it works, we have tried it, but it’s not something that the automaker officially supports.
Sylvain tried the system on a dozen electric vehicles, and it works perfectly with most of them.
However, not all automakers have adopted the new bidirectional charging standard. In his tests, he found that Ford’s EVs are the ones that work best with it. Most Tesla vehicles tested performed well, but a few would cut off after approximately 5 minutes.
GM’s vehicles were notoriously hard to make work with the DC charger.
Sigenergy’s system is the first to be fully certified to the ISO standard, and they are a bit ahead of the curve. Now, automakers need to fully support the standard to unlock all that potential energy storage capacity.
Electrek’s Take
Can you imagine the value in energy capacity we could unlock if this were widely available? All battery systems become interconnected between cars, homes, and the grid.
You can always have energy go to where it is needed the most.
I think that’s the future of a decentralized energy infrastructure.
I thought that this was Tesla’s plan for the Powerwall. Elon had hinted at this for a while. It would have made a great deal of sense, given that Tesla is both an automaker and a leader in energy storage, but it never happened.
Kudos to Sigenergy for leading the charge here. This is a fascinating product that enables complete control over your energy assets from your electric car to your solar panels.
Take a look at the user interface in Sigenergy’s app:
This is a treasure trove of stats for energy nerds. The first screen is very similar to the Tesla Powerwall app, but the rest provides much more detail. You can see where the energy in your batteries are coming from and where they are going exactly.
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