A £400,000 Government-funded project is to investigate whether gamification could encourage electric car drivers to engage with vehicle-to-grid technologies.

There are almost 150,000 electric cars in the UK, and harnessing those batteries to store and release energy when it is most needed could be important in providing a more stable energy grid.

The project will look at how drivers can be encouraged to be involved in V2G, which would allow energy companies and the National Grid to harness EV batteries.

It will also analyse the business case for V2G technologies and their impact on the National Grid.

The programme is a partnership between energy company Ecotricity, Gengame, EnAppSys, Newcastle University and Northern Powergrid, and received almost £300,000 from Innovate UK. Additional funding coming from the partners themselves.

Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, said: “Electric vehicles have been central to our view of the future for the last decade, not just for their potential to clean up the air we breathe but also for their potential role in the Smart Grid that we need to build to deliver an energy future that is affordable and clean. 

“Technology is at the heart of delivering this but it has to engage energy users. This study will help us better understand the relationship between people and technology.”

The project is part of the Vehicle-to-Grid competition, funded by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and the department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), in partnership with Innovate UK.