From SEVR
If you are the owner of an Electric Vehicle (EV), at some point you have probably wondered whether you could use that enormous battery for anything else. Say, powering your home, or even feeding excess power into the energy grid and getting paid for it. This is what’s known as vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology (we will use V2G in this article to refer to both). With the news that Australian regulations have been updated to allow this technology to go live by the end of 2024, we expect 2025 to be the year V2G becomes mainstream.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of what this really means, let’s first cover some EV battery basics:EV owners can already power individual appliances and devices using their EV battery, with most vehicles including plugs/cables to do this. Powering devices is known as vehicle-to-load (V2L), and could mean powering a TV, laptop, or a combination of devices up to the 1.5-3.6kW maximum limited by the EV. Perfect when out camping, or during a blackout.
A typical EV battery in Australia will be around 50kWh and can be as high as 100kWh. For a 50kWh battery, this is enough to power the average 4-person Australian home for nearly 2.5 days (based on 2023 energy data). However, this power can’t be accessed through V2L (i.e. you can’t plug your entire home into a car’s V2L power socket).
For comparison, a home battery system such as Tesla Powerwall has a 13kWh rating. EV batteries are several times larger.
The average Australian driver only travels 35km per day, using a small fraction of an EVs battery capacity.
What’s so exciting about V2G coming online is that it now becomes possible to tap into the full capacity of an EV battery through the same connection used for charging. This means that just like controlling when and how your EV charges (e.g. only at night during off-peak times), you can also control when and how the EV feeds back into the home or grid (e.g. when prices are highest, or only when there is a blackout). The missing piece in this puzzle has been access to special V2G chargers that can manage this two-way load, called bidirectional charging. But with changes to regulations making it possible to buy and install these systems by the end of 2024, manufacturers and suppliers of EV chargers are now racing to gain approvals and bring these to market.
For consumers, tapping into V2G is going to require an upgrade of the charger as the one you currently have is only designed for the one-way flow of energy into the car. V2G charging has required new technologies to be added to chargers to allow two-way electrical flow. It has also required updates to standards, like Australia’s AS/NZS 4777.2 Grid connection of energy systems via inverters—Installation requirements, which is the same standard used for solar inverters. Why? Because most V2G chargers are inverters (or they must be connected to inverters), converting the DC power from the vehicle back to AC for the home. This also means that these new V2G chargers need to be approved and listed on the Clean Energy Council’s database just like a solar inverter system.
V2G is also going to require a software update for most vehicles to unlock this capability and tell the car how to manage the battery. Most of the major car manufacturers have announced they are working through this now. One of the big questions car companies and consumers alike will have is whether using the car battery for V2G will degrade the battery and shorten its lifespan? There is limited data about this right now, but it seems clear that some limits will be implemented, for example limiting the speed and extent of battery discharge through V2G. Some research even suggests that controlled V2G use can extend battery life by optimising the discharge to counteract battery fade. Understanding this will be critical for battery warranties and the appeal of V2G systems to the public.
At the time of writing, only the Nissan Leaf and a couple of Mitsubishi hybrid vehicles have the capacity to work with V2G in Australia, and a very small number of Australians have worked with their local energy providers to be early adopters of V2G systems. The CSIRO has also been running a large trial in Port Macquarie to understand the full impact of V2G systems on households and energy grids. For many, the allure of V2G is that a vehicle could be charging for free through the day using solar, and then feed this back into the home at night. Basically, off-grid living enabled by electric vehicles.
One of the other big selling points that EV manufacturers may hope to leverage is that V2G can be used to offset the cost of buying an EV – if you consider that a home battery system may cost $10-15k to buy and install today, you could put this money towards buying an EV instead and gain a significantly higher capacity battery, that can also drive you around.
Several articles have summarised the first V2G chargers likely to hit Australian markets. Other than the Sigenergy system, which is already available due to existing certifications of their stand-alone inverter, most companies are suggesting V2G charger releases in Q1/Q2 2025. However, some of the most exciting developments that will start to drive prices down are likely to come from the mainstream EV charging brands, like Myenergi (manufacturer of Zappi), and Zaptec (one of the largest European EV charger manufacturers), who have announced they are finalising their own V2G chargers. While this new generation of chargers is going to be more expensive than standard chargers for the foreseeable future, there will be a numbers and convenience factor that encourages many to either upgrade their existing charger, or buy into the EV market for the first time.
Follow SEVR to be the first to see our shift into the V2G market in 2025. Big things are coming!
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