'Airbnb' for EV charging? Connecting EV drivers to other people's solar

An innovative online energy marketplace called Bow Charging has launched in Sydney, promising to try and connect EV drivers to households with easy charging options and unlocking a potential source of income for solar homes.

The idea behind Bow Charging is to bring two separate groups together – those who have EVs but do not have home charging facilities, and those who have rooftop solar and EV charging equipment but are not using the power during the day.

“The mission of the company is to supercharge clean energy using batteries on wheels,” founder and CEO of Bow Charging, Nick Bradley told TheDriven.

“Having worked in renewables and particularly solar batteries, I was frustrated with how slow the uptake was. Now EVs are coming on a lot faster than home batteries and then the batteries themselves within the EVs are 5-10 times the size.

“So, I really wanted to accelerate the adoption of clean energy using electric vehicles.”

The website currently allows hosts to set their own price for the amount of time someone uses the charger, as well as facilitate payments. The website is free to sign up to, but Bow Charging takes a marketplace fee.

Those with EVs to be charged can search the site for hosts who are convenient for them, at prices around half that of fast chargers.

“We’ve got all these rooftop solar homes and businesses, but they’re getting paid almost nothing to send that power back to the grid,” says Bradley. “So, I thought, why don’t we bring those two sides together?”

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However, not every home charger will be appropriate for the program, with Bow Charging prioritising those in convenient locations.

“I think the convenience factor is quite a big one. Hosts probably need to be located near commercial hubs or commuter parking or other daytime activities like the beach, golf or walking tracks,” Bradley told TheDriven.

Although the system currently uses time spent in the location to charge customers, there are plans to upgrade this to metered energy.

“At the moment, it’s a time-based matrix … but I want to develop it more, so it’s actually metering the energy, either via the EV charger or that EV itself,” said Bradley.

“Then probably in the short to medium term, I’d like to integrate it with the PV inverter and so the charge rate could be variable.”

Currently, Bow Charging is only available in Sydney as part of a beta, with a few hundred transactions expected in the next year. There are also a few things to iron out still – for example, where a car can charge that is easily accessible for the driver, but not too open that anyone can charge.

Despite that, there are a number of people currently on the waitlist.

”We just launched probably three or four weeks ago,” Bradley told The Driven.

“We’re definitely in testing mode – not looking to get big numbers yet because I want to be able to get feedback and action it quickly.”

Both hosts and drivers can sign up as part of the waitlist here.