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Could our cars power our homes in Australia?
Picture this: You plug your car in and it charges at the cheapest rate or for free from your solar panels during the day. Then your car powers your home in the evening as you cook dinner and run the dishwasher. Once your power bill arrives you’re in credit, because your car’s been sending energy back to the grid while not in use.
That reality could be a step closer after the Australian standards that control vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home charging are set to be amended by the end of 2024. These standards relate to the installation and performance of bidirectional chargers and inverters, and amending them takes away regulatory roadblocks for V2G capability.
So could we really treat our cars as power banks on wheels soon? And how does all this stuff work?
What is V2G, or vehicle-to-grid?
Vehicle-to-grid is a technology that allows suitably-equipped electric vehicles to act as an energy storage device and send power back to the power grid through a bidirectional charger (that is, a charger that can send power both ways).
V2G tech can enable a household to store cheaper free electricity, either from off-peak power or from solar charging. But it could also be used to send power back to the grid at times of peak demand, like evenings, to help ‘smooth’ the grid. Basically, we could put our cars to work while they’re simply sitting at home.
And what is V2H, or vehicle-to-home?
Vehicle-to-home or V2H works much the same way, but the car’s battery transfers energy to your own home to power your appliances and balance your electricity usage. V2H allows you to store cheap energy or free solar energy to use later that night, instead of taking power from the grid at peak prices. It could even power the home during a power outage. The concept is much the same as with a home battery, but some of the new V2G-capable EVs have a capacity that’s three or four times that of most home batteries. For example, Ford's F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck can store a massive 131 kilowatt-hours of energy. That’s roughly the weekly power consumption of a three-person household in Australia! V2H could work for public buildings too. Imagine getting free parking in return for some unneeded power from your car.
V2G and V2H applied across a large population could ultimately mean lower costs for everyone, along with a more stable grid and lower demand for fossil fuels.
