If you’ve ever looked at your parked EV and thought, “There’s a massive battery just sitting there,” you’re exactly the audience for Enphase’s IQ Bidirectional EV Charger. It turns the family car into a flexible energy asset—able to charge from the grid or solar, keep the lights on during an outage, and even earn its keep sending power back when the grid needs help. Here’s how it all hangs together, in plain English and with an Aussie lens.
Bidirectional charging, without the buzzwords
Conventional chargers only flow one way: grid → car. Bidirectional charging runs both ways, letting your EV supply the house (vehicle-to-home, V2H) and export to the grid (vehicle-to-grid, V2G). There are two families of tech here:
- AC bidirectional (the inverter lives in the car)
- DC bidirectional (the inverter lives in the charger)
Enphase’s IQ unit takes the DC route, shifting the heavy lifting out of the vehicle and into a stationary, grid-aware box on the wall. That lowers complexity for car makers, simplifies compliance, and makes upgrades easier at home.
Why putting the brains in the charger matters
Grid rules, voltages and phases vary wildly around the world. By handling conversion and compliance in the charger—rather than asking every EV to be a mini power station—Enphase sidesteps a lot of pain: fewer changes needed per car model, smoother certification, and a device that can be tuned to local grid codes at install. It’s the right job in the right place.
Two ways to set it up at home
- IQ Bidirectional EV Charger + IQ Meter Collar
This pairing reads whole-home imports/exports in real time, caps current to avoid panel upgrades, and can automatically island your house during an outage so the EV can take over. You also get V2G export, smart and scheduled charging, and a “black start” to spin a dead home back up when you plug in. - Fully integrated Enphase Energy System
Add PV and Enphase batteries and you’ve got a tight, single-app ecosystem. Features like Green Charging (soaking up your own solar) and richer AI Optimisation kick in, balancing solar, storage and the car without the household micromanaging it.
What’s inside: microinverters, comms and safety
Under the skin, the charger borrows from Enphase’s battery architecture and well-proven microinverter platform:
- Three IQ10 EV Microinverters (GaN-based, passively cooled), 3.84 kW each for a total of 11.52 kW—quiet, modular, and happy in grid-forming or grid-following modes. They can handle phase imbalance and build a stable neutral for split-phase systems.
- Communication & Controls Unit speaks ISO 15118-20/-2, DIN 70121 and SAE J2847 to the car; IEEE 2030.5 to the grid; and OCPP 1.6/2.0.1/2.1 to backend platforms. Over-the-air updates, health monitoring, and tight integration with the Enphase App are part of the package.
- Power & Safety Unit covers isolation monitoring, weld detection, revenue-grade metering on AC and DC, and manages black-start precharge to bring a dark home back online safely.
Headline specs (the cheat sheet)
- Connection: AC to home, DC to car
- Rated power: 11.52 kW charge/discharge
- Grid voltages: 240 V single/split-phase; 400 V three-phase
- DC range: 200–1000 V
- Comms: Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, LTE Cat 4, CAN
- Plug types: NACS (US), CCS1 (US), CCS2 (rest-of-world)
- User interface: Enphase App, LEDs, physical black-start switch
- Standards: ISO 15118-20/-2 (EV), OCPP up to 2.1 (cloud), IEEE 2030.5 (grid)
- Warranty: 10 years
Smarts that save: AI Optimisation & Green Charging
AI Optimisation crunches tariffs (including ToU and demand charges), your departure time and target state-of-charge, solar forecasts, home load forecasts, even OEM battery constraints. It then schedules charge/discharge to minimise cost while keeping the car ready when you need it. In Enphase’s example day, simply flipping from intelligent one-way charging to bidirectional operation turned a $13 daily cost into a $46 credit by charging ahead of value windows and exporting during peak prices—without missing the driver’s SoC target.
Prefer to keep it green? Green Charging funnels surplus solar straight into the car, and can support home loads from the EV when clouds roll over—maximising self-consumption and trimming exports where they’re restricted or poorly paid.
Phase-aware power that dodges panel upgrades
Matched with the IQ Meter Collar, the charger can sense per-phase limits and dynamically rebalance. Example: on a 100 A split-phase service (80 A usable), if L1 is busy and L2 is slack, it can pull extra on L2 → neutral to lift charge power—without breaching the interconnection limit. That’s real-world flexibility that often avoids costly board work.
Modes that matter day-to-day
- V2H (backup): If the car is plugged in when the grid drops, the meter collar islands the house and the charger forms a microgrid in milliseconds—appliances ride through with no drama. If the car isn’t plugged in, black start waits for you to connect and then brings the home back up.
- V2G (export/VPPs): The Enphase Cloud can dispatch your system into demand response or virtual power plant events within homeowner-set limits—turning mobility into a paying DER. Control lives in the Enphase App.
Built for compliance, not headaches
The hard bit in bidirectional charging isn’t just power—it’s standards across four fronts: home, grid, EV and cloud. Enphase’s platform lines up with NEC/UL at home (incl. UL 2594, UL 2202, UL 3141), IEEE 1547/UL 1741/IEEE 2030.5 on the grid side (plus regional codes), ISO 15118-20 at the vehicle, and OCPP up to 2.1 in the cloud—with TLS 1.3 security and utility-friendly telemetry. Firmware “grid-code libraries” let installers commission for local rules without bespoke hardware.
Who benefits?
- Homeowners: lower bills via tariff arbitrage and self-consumption, blackout resilience, and a clean upgrade path as needs grow (start with the charger; add solar and batteries later). All steerable from a single app.
- Auto OEMs: faster time-to-market for bidirectional features by keeping complex grid compliance out of the vehicle and in a stationary, updatable device.
The bottom line
Enphase’s IQ Bidirectional EV Charger is less about a shiny new wallbox and more about giving your EV a day job. With proven microinverter guts, smart software, and a standards-first design, it’s a tidy way to turn parked batteries into household muscle and grid support—no heroics required.
Article adapted from: enphase.com - IQ Bidirectional EV Charger