Ford Explorer and Capri can act as power storage units for the home

However, bidirectional charging requires a "home power station" from E3/DC

Photo by: Ford

By: Stefan Leichsenring

Jan 29, 2025 at 4:23am ET

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Ford Explorer and Capri support bi-directional charging. Now you can use Ford's new electric cars with VW's MEB technology as energy storage for your own solar power. All you need is a home power station from E3/DC.

If you have a large photovoltaic system on your roof and do not use the electricity straight away, you normally need a special battery to store the energy. Now you can also use the batteries of the Explorer or Capri for this purpose. The unused solar power then charges the drive battery of the electric car. Later, when electricity is needed at home, it can be drawn from the battery again.

The reason for this is that it is often no longer financially viable to feed your own green electricity into the grid due to low feed-in tariffs. It is therefore more attractive to use the free electricity yourself than to receive a small payment and then buy expensive grid electricity. All in all, it saves you money. In addition, the storage system ensures that energy is available even in the event of a power cut.

The necessary technology on the house side is provided by the German company E3/DC. The system consists of the home power station S10E Compact as well as a bidirectional DC charging station and a DC/DC converter. The aforementioned home power station is not yet on the E3/DC website (even though a S10E Pro Compact home power station is described there). However, every home power station apparently contains a power storage unit. This means that the car battery can only be used as an additional storage unit. Neither Ford nor E3/DC provides any information on the price of the system; you will have to ask for a quote.

In the system, the direct current from the photovoltaic system apparently flows into the car battery without an inverter. With other solutions, the electricity is first converted into alternating current and then back into direct current in the vehicle's on-board charger. However, the direct current must then pass through an inverter when it is fed into the AC domestic grid. The purpose of the DC/DC converter is to 'step up' the voltage coming from the photovoltaic system.

Ford Explorer: Extended Range from 48,500 euros

Photo by: InsideEVs

Ford Capri: Extended Range from 51,950 euros

Photo by: Ford

On the vehicle side, an extended-range battery is required, i.e. a battery with 77 or 79 kWh - the 52 kWh battery of the entry-level versions is not sufficient. To ensure that the car remains ready to drive at all times, a lower limit can be set to which the battery can be discharged. Generally, only the SoC range between 20 and 80 per cent is used, according to the E3/DC website. However, this still leaves over 45 kWh as buffer storage for the car's own solar system.

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According to E3DC, the system can also be combined with flexible electricity tariffs such as those offered by Tibber. This means that the stored electricity can be used when grid electricity is particularly expensive.

The bottom line

Simply use the electric car as an energy storage system for your own solar power: it sounds like you could do without a dedicated battery for the PV system. But this is not the case with the system now being promoted by Ford. It requires a system that apparently already includes an energy storage unit. This means that the electric car's battery, at 45 kWh, stores a lot of energy, but can only be used as an additional storage unit. Furthermore, E3/DC does not reveal the price of the hardware - presumably it is complex and therefore quite expensive. What a shame.

Sources: Ford, E3/DC