May the force be with whoever needs it whenever.

Everyone knows the original of this phrase and the meaning behind it: People with similar goals and drives get together to do good. This modified phrase describes perfectly the motivation of Pionix and about ten other partners to join the research project "Inter-BDL", conducted by the University of Applied Sciences Ulm and the German Aerospace Center.

The goal of the research project is to find actionable solutions to balance energy between electric vehicles (ev), the power grid and industry infrastructure in a way that power is always available wherever and whenever needed.

Inter-BDL is about more than just the typical aspects of bidirectional charging and implementing ISO 15118. The project  seeks answers to questions such as: 

• How to fully understand the exact requirements for distributing power and deducing specific use cases in the overall system?
• Which technical and processual aspects are involved to get the complete bidirectional system chain running?
• Which configuration and logic is necessary for an energy distribution system?

However, the project should also have applicable results. This is why the project consortium defines business cases that can be implemented in a commercially profitable way to drive sustainability. Those business cases will be the basis for multiple laboratory, field and simulation tests.

Pionix is part of this insight-giving journey. Together with the project team we want to learn and understand the requirements for building complex systems of charging stations, energy management systems, communication channels to backends, solar prediction solutions and so on.

What is our contribution to Inter-BDL?

First, we will provide multiple software implementations of multiple protocols and use cases and also will create an enhanced version of our development kit BelayBox which runs EVerest, the open source software stack for EV charging. We will integrate DC and bidirectional charging capabilities into the hardware.

Second, we will set up a test environment at our headquarter in Bad Schönborn during the project and support our project partners with testing procedures regarding their test systems. This work will give us additional insights into requirements for further standardization development and let us give feedback to the standard committee teams.

What are the expected results?

For the EVerest community as well as the energy industry, the project will provide valuable insights leading to a greater availability of standards implemented as open source modules. And furthermore, we hope to make EVerest even more powerful as a framework and operating system for charging systems.

About Inter-BDL Project

Inter-BDL is a research project run by German Aerospace Center and lead by Technical University of Ulm. The long title of the project is (translated from the German original title) "Interoperable Management of bidirectional charging for an optimized and resilient operation of the power grid based on innovative business cases".