Australia is on the cusp of the next big renewable energy leap: using the electric car to double as a home battery, according to experts in the field. Australia has already embraced solar energy with immense enthusiasm – one in three Australian houses now has solar panels – and with the recent government subsidy there has been a surge of home battery purchases to store the solar power. At the same time, just under 10 per cent of all cars now sold in Australia each month are electric.
The intersection of these two renewable energy arenas is the nation’s next big step. “We’re on the edge of the technology and the uptake of being able to do this,” says CSIRO energy systems research program director Dr John Ward.
Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology allows the owners of electric vehicles to power their homes with their car batteries, and also potentially allows them to sell power stored in EV batteries back into the grid – which could be lucrative at times of high demand.
The technology is already available. A joint CSIRO-Essential Energy trial last year used a Ford Lightning as a test vehicle with a Sigenergy charger, using the bi-directional charging to power a home. The Lightning has the CCS-2 plug that is installed in nearly every EV sold in Australia.
“Although the manufacturers aren’t yet talking about it, or warranting it, that connector that so many cars in the Australian market now have technically can support this capability,” Ward says. “We’re realising that the existing fleet of electric cars in Australia actually could start participating in this V2G capability.”
EV batteries are generally much larger than home batteries and an EV battery could comfortably power a typical home for a few days. “A number of vehicle manufacturers have announced that they’re going to move towards offering V2G,” Ward says, adding they are now working through how warranties would work for V2G usage.
Following the V2G roadmap released by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and RACE for 2030 (RACE) in February, the automotive sector is now looking to Australia as one of the leaders of the global V2G rollout, says Electric Vehicle Council’s head of energy and infrastructure, Dr Alina Dini.
“I think it’s really great,” she adds. “As we move into a more uncertain future with greater climate risk and geopolitical issues around fuel, and also more technology innovation, I think we’ll see that everyday users are excited about the options that they’re going to have with their vehicle.”
She sees the electric vehicle transforming from a transport-only possession into a piece of multi-use equipment – powering the home and providing a passive form of income by selling power into the energy market, as well as getting the kids to school and bringing the shopping home.
“It’s analogous to a mobile phone,” she says. “The home phones that we used to have did one job, just like the cars that we had used to do one job. Now the EV will be able to do multiple jobs, like your smartphone does multiple jobs for your life.”
The Electric Vehicle Council has had conversations with car manufacturers over the past month on Australia’s imminent V2G adoption, Dini adds. “They are excited about the prospect and they are working through how to best manage this new option for their customers, both the ones that already own vehicles, and the ones that might purchase them in future,” she says.
The question is whether Australia embraces V2G en masse, or whether it remains more of a niche offering, says Dr Scott Dwyer, research director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney.
“Australians are actually quite energy-literate and the high prevalence of solar really plays well into using your EV as a battery on wheels,” he says, adding the Institute’s research had found many consumers like the idea of V2G but some were worried about warranties for their vehicles and about battery health.
These obstacles are already being overcome. BMW and energy company E.On announced at the Munich Motor Show in September that the company’s V2G offering had would optimise the battery, promising no impairment of battery lifetime, Dwyer says.
“All these collaborations between energy companies and car companies, whether it’s national or international, that’s creating more public and media interest, and fuelling more interest from the growing number of Australians who are installing solar and buying EVs,” he says. “There’s already an uptick in terms of interest from consumers and industry.”
A government-funded trial of 50 V2G installations by Amber Electric this year will fan consumer interest, Dwyer adds, and as more car-makers announce V2G options, momentum will build.
As the barriers fall and more people understand standards and regulations compliance and there are more options for consumers, expectations build, he says.
“There’s a vision that it could be multi-billion-dollar opportunity to unlock 100 gigawatt hours of distributed energy storage by 2030,” he says. Ease and speed of V2G uptake will be necessary to shift Australia’s thinking about the EV as home battery.
“That’s the big question,” Dwyer says. “Does it stay at tens of hundreds of users by 2030 or is there potential to get to tens of thousands by 2030? I think it’s particularly hard to see where that’s going to end up.”