Massachusetts wants to pay EV drivers for their battery power
SkimNews Take
V2G turns the average parked EV into a dispatchable grid asset — letting utilities aggregate thousands of small batteries into a flexible resource pool that grows in lockstep with EV adoption.
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- Eversource and National Grid are adding residential vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging to their ConnectedSolutions virtual power plant programs, with EnergyHub, Sunrun, and The Mobility House providing the smart-charging and grid-integration tech.
- An initial list of eligible vehicles includes the Ford F-150 Lightning, Nissan LEAF, Kia EV9, Polestar 3, and Volvo EX90; the utilities have not yet announced which bidirectional chargers qualify or when enrollment opens.
- National Grid participants through ConnectedSolutions can earn up to $275 per average kilowatt of performance over the summer season, translating to approximately $1,375–$2,750 for many residential participants depending on charger capacity and performance.
- More than 150,000 EVs are already on Massachusetts roads, and the number of bidirectional-capable models is growing, giving utilities a potentially large distributed battery pool to tap during demand spikes.
- National Grid is already running V2G with light- and medium-duty fleets including electric school buses, while Eversource is in talks with school districts about adding V2G through its ConnectedSolutions+ program.
- Sunrun director of grid services Chip Silverman said vehicle batteries play a critical role in stabilizing the grid, providing backup power to homes, and lowering energy costs for everyone.
Why it matters: Residential EV owners with the right hardware can now turn parked cars into grid assets, with National Grid paying up to $2,750 per summer season for peak-period discharge — a concrete number that sets a benchmark for whether bidirectional EV economics actually work for individual drivers, not just fleets.
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