In “About face 2.0” Alan Cooper in the early 2000’s uses a metaphor for an excellent user experience: butler-software. Systems with a butler attitude are truly helpful, polite, decisive and do not bother the user with unnecessary questions. Hard to reach but very necessary for the adoption of complex systems. Certainly in the beginning of this century.

Vehicle to grid is complex. It has to take many parameters into account like arbitrary solar production, my capricious usage patterns of car and home appliances and fluctuating electricity prices. And there are many technically advanced components that have to work together. So how to keep this simple and elegant so that it feels like a butler is serving you?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and/or Machine Learning(ML) have made giant leaps in the past 20 years. We now can use AI and ML to make the user feel served by a trustworthy butler. It can take al the factors into account and come up with an optimal dis-charging schedule based on previous behaviour and their calender. In our living lab it results in shadow-software: always serving the user-goals from the background, gracefully stepping forward when needed. In the mean time keeping the user in control for any sudden change of plans in car demand.

As V2G@home will go live in this month we can start monitoring hard KPI’s like cost efficiency and GHG savings. And with that we’ll also zoom in to user acceptance and usage patterns. Here we will keep you informed on our findings.

If you want to co-create around usable vehicle-to-grid in domestic settings, please also step forward and get in touch!