A Quebec company that wants to save individuals thousands of dollars by enabling them to use energy smarter has just received strategic support from Volvo.
The Swedish giant is taking a minority stake in dcbel to support its R&D and marketing efforts.
“Volvo told us that we have the best technology in the world, the first to enable bidirectionality, which means that we can use the vehicle’s energy to power homes,” explains dcbel CEO Marc- Andre Forget.
The dcbel r16 energy station integrates a multifunctional two-way charger for electric vehicles and a solar inverter. By converting the electricity generated by solar panels and stored in the home’s batteries, dcbel enables optimized energy management for home and car while reducing the energy demand of the public grid.
dcbel, which is based in Montreal with offices in San Francisco and Paris, will also soon be launching the R8, a two-way charging station that simply draws power from the vehicle to save on hourly energy bills. where it is sold at a higher price.
Significant savings
In some places – and this may one day be the case in Quebec – electricity prices rise during peak periods. In California, for example, it costs 57 cents per kilowatt hour in the early evening, while it is 26 cents at noon.
“In this way we can use energy from the car battery for dinner and the children’s pool and use cheap electricity tariffs at night to charge the vehicle. This will save a California household $800 to $1,000 in a year,” says Mr. Forget.
“Rising grid energy prices and widespread power outages are challenges consumers are facing today. Our investment in dcbel helps alleviate these challenges for our customers,” said Alexander Petrofski, CEO of the Volvo Cars Tech Fund, in a statement.
dcbel owns the most important patents for electrification in around fifty countries. His R8 will be slightly more expensive than the electric car chargers currently on the market, but the energy savings that come with it will give him an edge.
Further partnerships are yet to be announced
Volvo, which has taken a minority stake in dcbel, will import its technology from around the world, but without demanding exclusivity.
“We work with five other car manufacturers with whom we have signed agreements and who are Volvo’s competitors. “The dcbel company will probably grow from an anonymous company to a very well-known company quite quickly,” predicts Mr. Forget, who has been preparing for this growth with his team for five years.
“But yeah, there are times when we think it’s huge! “We’re disrupting a market with a much bigger impact than we originally thought,” he said.
All new electric vehicles must be compatible with the two-way chargers of vehicles already sold, even with the cheapest vehicles in the electric category.
Can you share information about this story with us?
Do you have a scoop that might be of interest to our readers?
Write to us or call us directly at 1-800-63SCOOP.