Munich. The BMW Group and E.ON have agreed on the
first pan-European cooperation for intelligent charging at home. The
aim of the strategic cooperation is to create “Connected Home
Charging”, a holistic charging ecosystem that will allow
customers to connect their electrified BMW or MINI vehicle with the
energy system, as part of a climate-neutral, sustainable household.
With this unique cross-sector cooperation, the BMW Group and E.ON are
laying the groundwork for harnessing the tremendous potential of
electric vehicles for the transformation towards exclusive use of
green energy.
Frank Weber, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, responsible
for Development, says: “BMW represents the ‘Ultimate Electric Driving
Machine’. But for us, e-mobility is much more than electric driving:
green energy, sustainably-sourced raw materials, charging, recycling —
we are driving all these key factors forward at the same time.
Together with E.ON, we will make the car an intelligent element of the
smart home. This will bring more balance to the private energy
ecosystem, with lower costs and an improved carbon footprint, and will
enable smart integration into the energy market in the future.”
Patrick Lammers, member of the Board of Management of E.ON SE,
responsible for the customer solutions business, adds: “E.ON and the
BMW Group are already leaders in their industries. We are now
leveraging our strengths and combining them to create a unique
ecosystem for charging at home. In this way, we will jointly set the
standard for electrified vehicles to become part of the energy market
in the future and support the energy transition.”
Cooperation partners contribute their expertise
The cooperation will focus on at-home charging, which is already, and
will continue to be, the most important use case for charging
electrified vehicles. Longer downtimes also mean that at-home charging
processes are particularly well suited for intelligent control. The
comprehensive ecosystem that E.ON and the BMW Group are building
together is being tailored to take at-home charging to a new level.
The core element of the ecosystem is the creation of a common
interface that combines three complex and previously separate systems:
BMW Group electric vehicles, customers’ smart homes and the energy market.
Together, the two partners will span the entire breadth of the
ecosystem, each contributing their respective competencies: As part of
the cooperation, the BMW Group will be responsible for the vehicles
and charging hardware and will manage the interface with the customer
with a focus on their mobility needs. In addition to providing
installation, electrical and connectivity services at customers’
homes, E.ON will also be responsible for ensuring sustainable energy
tariffs and access to the energy market, which plays a key role in the
intelligent control of charging processes.
Combining the broad expertise of both partners ensures that the
vehicle will fit seamlessly into the infrastructure of the user’s
household and the charging process will run smoothly. At the same
time, it allows the benefits of in-house energy generation – for
example, through a solar system – and the dynamism of the energy
market to be used to benefit the customer.
Customer offering will be consistently developed and expanded
The first customer offering of “Connected Home Charging”
will be available in several European countries from the mid-second
half of 2023 and will lay the foundations for hardware and networking
as a holistic package solution. Intelligent control of charging
processes will initially enable two variants: solar-optimised
charging, which allows the largest possible amount of electricity from
the home’s own photovoltaic system to be used, and load-optimised
charging, which optimally balances the amount of electricity available
at home. In addition to greater convenience, development and use of
the ecosystem also offers customers the potential to save costs,
increase household self-sufficiency and optimise their carbon footprint.
In the coming years, the ecosystem will be consistently expanded to
include additional customer benefits: In a second step, this will
include cost-optimised charging, which will extend the connectivity of
fully-electric vehicles and smart homes to the energy system.
Customers can then take advantage of price developments on the power
exchange market with a special electricity contract that allows them
to charge at low prices whenever possible. This maximises cost
efficiency for charging the vehicle. At the same time, the customer’s
mobility needs always come first – optimal time slots are also
determined based on the customer’s planned departure time and required
range. This option will be available to customers over the next year.
The cooperation will also create the necessary conditions for
enabling bidirectional charging in the future. This technology makes
it possible to use the fully-electric vehicle’s high-voltage battery
as an energy storage device and feed the stored electricity back into
the customer’s own household or the power grid at a later time.
Results from BDL pilot project used in developing customer offering
The results of the joint research project “Bidirectional Charging
Management — BDL”, which was successfully completed at the end of
2022, are being incorporated into development of the future customer
offering. The focus was on using a holistic approach for the first
time to connect vehicles, charging infrastructure and power grids in a
way that promotes renewable energy and increases security of supply.
For this purpose, 50 regenerative BMW i3s were provided to customers.
The results of the research project, which was conducted by the BMW
Group and E.ON subsidiaries Bayernwerk and E.ON Energie Deutschland,
together with various other players from the automotive industry,
charging infrastructure, energy industry and academia, have been
consistently positive at all levels. From the customer perspective,
the entire system was easy to integrate into everyday life and was
found to be useful and worthwhile. This is also reflected in their
high willingness to continue using BDL technology.
With regard to the ‘vehicle to grid’ application, i.e., feeding
energy into the power grid, the effectiveness of bidirectional
charging management was demonstrated: On the one hand, intelligently
controlled integration of electric vehicles into the power grid can
further increase renewable energy as a share of total consumption in
Germany. On the other, electric vehicle storage systems can absorb
peaks in production from wind and solar plants in a targeted manner
and release them again in times of low generation, while continuing to
meet customers’ driving needs. This can reduce the need to fire up
fossil-fuel power plants and their emissions at such times. In
addition, bidirectional charging technology can thus contribute to
supply security and grid stability.
In this way, electromobility is increasingly becoming an integral
part of the energy transition: Its ramp-up reduces CO2 emissions both
from mobility and electricity generation. Scaled for electric vehicle
fleets from 2030, bidirectional charging could even have positive
economic effects, since using the batteries of millions of electric
vehicles could reduce the need to build up large-scale battery storage
systems and gas power plants.
Smart charging has huge potential
From the BMW Group and E.ON perspective, the project results
underline the tremendous potential of bidirectional charging and
demonstrate the central role that technology will play in holistic
energy management in the future. Cost advantages can already be
achieved with standard unidirectional charging, by taking advantage of
cost-optimised time slots and relying on solar power from the
household’s own photovoltaic system – preferably using renewable
energy. This is the aim of the solar-optimised and load-optimised
charging options that will be available in several European countries
from the middle of the second half of the year.
Bidirectional charging technology will enable further functionality
and optimisations in the ecosystem, such as allowing the electric
vehicle to provide grid-supporting and stabilising services as part of
bidirectional charging or the more comprehensive, optimised use of
green energy through the entire power grid.
Against this background, both partners will focus their efforts on
the opportunities offered by bidirectional charging and its two
central use cases: ‘vehicle to home’ (feeding electricity from the
high-voltage battery into the household) and ‘vehicle to grid’
(feeding electricity from the high-voltage battery into the power
grid) — with the clear aim of creating appropriate customer offerings
in the medium term.
Successful cooperation expanded and intensified
This cooperation on intelligent at-home charging expands the
successful cooperation between E.ON and the BMW Group. The BMW Group
operates one of Germany’s largest company charging networks, which
E.ON has built up since 2019. It now comprises more than 5,500
charging points at eight German locations. More than 1,600 of these
are eRoaming-capable and therefore publicly accessible. Expansion will
continue in 2023 and 2024: BMW branches in Germany will also be
connected to the company charging network, which will then include
more than 6,000 charging points. All charging points are powered
entirely by renewable energies.
If you have any questions, please contact:
BMW Group Corporate Communications
Sebastian Kessler, Spokesperson Charging Infrastructure, Politics
Telephone: +49 89 382-21616
Email: sebastian.ke.kessler@bmwgroup.de
Eckhard Wannieck, Head of Communications Corporate, Finance, Sales
Telephone: +49 89 382-24544
Email: eckhard.wannieck@bmwgroup.com
Media website: www.press.bmwgroup.com
Email: presse@bmwgroup.com
E.ON SE Communications
Isabel Reinhardt, Spokesperson
Telephone: +49 173 6840253
E-Mail: isabel.reinhardt@eon.com
The BMW Group
With its four brands BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce and BMW Motorrad, the BMW
Group is the world’s leading premium manufacturer of automobiles and
motorcycles and also provides premium financial and mobility services.
The BMW Group production network comprises over 30 production sites
worldwide; the company has a global sales network in more than 140 countries.
In 2022, the BMW Group sold nearly 2.4 million passenger vehicles and
more than 202,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax in the
financial year 2022 was € 23.5 billion on revenues amounting to €
142.6 billion. As of 31 December 2022, the BMW Group had a workforce
of 149,475 employees.
The success of the BMW Group has always been based on long-term
thinking and responsible action. The company set the course for the
future at an early stage and consistently makes sustainability and
efficient resource management central to its strategic direction, from
the supply chain through production to the end of the use phase of all products.
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