Company behind MyWheels wants to tackle grid congestion: 'You also increase the value of electric sharing cars with this'

Solve grid congestion at the local level by using home batteries and batteries from shared cars as flexible energy storage. That's the basis of The People's Power Plant by The Sharing Group, the company behind MyWheels and others. Launched in June, the project won the audience award at Change Inc.'s Transition Awards 2025 ceremony on July 1.

People's Power Plant is an initiative that uses home batteries and the battery capacity of MyWheels' shared cars to make the most efficient use of power from solar panels, among other things. In collaboration with the municipality of Utrecht, bi-directional charging station provider We Drive Solar, grid operator Stedin and supplier Renault, MyWheels is betting on models that can also feed power back to the grid. The batteries can draw power when there is a surplus of renewable energy and supply power back at times when demand exceeds supply.

Utrecht now has 50 MyWheels cars that act as driving neighborhood batteries. The plan is to scale this up to five hundred cars.

The Sharing Group also owns Hegg, a provider of dynamic energy contracts combined with home batteries. In addition, subsidiary Bliq offers smart software and hardware for home batteries to make them work optimally with the grid.