‘Game changer': Your electric vehicle can now power your home and the grid
The Clarkes, who live on a property near Tarago, south of Goulburn, NSW, and bought a Nissan Leaf in April 2023, were part of a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology trial through their electricity network Essential Energy and retailer Amber Electric.
They've made a killing. When two units went out at Eraring power station in NSW in May last year, they made $570 in two hours. When a similar event happened at Yallourn in Victoria last month, they made $370.
Having signed up to a pilot program, the couple are among the first in Australia to profit from what is known as vehicle-to-grid, or bidirectional charging, allowing people to store power in their car batteries during the day when the sun is out and power is cheap, and sell it back during the evening peak.
Francis Clarke, 85, has heard criticism that this is something only the wealthy can afford, but he argues that he is actually making power cheaper for other people.
'Everybody turns around and says, 'Oh you rich toffs – you can afford all these things and that's going to make our power more expensive,'' Clarke says.
'In fact it's not, because with me supplying power to the grid when it's in need, I'm supplying power to my neighbours. It doesn't require any poles and wires to be built, nor any high-tension leads to come in from God knows where. My power is being used locally, and the community doesn't have to pay for any of the storage that I'm paying for myself.'
Electricity distributors all over Australia have been running pilot studies for V2G charging around the country for about two years now. Standards Australia ticked off on the standard last year, and now electricity distributors such as Ausgrid are starting to green-light the capacity across their networks.
The technology is branded as a game changer for the energy revolution because it bolsters the shift from the antiquated notion of 'baseload power' to a modern distributed network. This in turn hastens the demise of the ageing coal-fired power fleet.
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The Age
4 days ago
- The Age
‘Game changer': Your electric vehicle can now power your home and the grid
Federal Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen says the government sees plenty of potential in EVs and setting up the grid so the vehicles can be used like 'household batteries on wheels'. 'Our government wants to make sure that Australians can take back control of their energy bills,' Bowen says. 'Whether that's through installing a cheaper home battery, or purchasing a V2G EV, Aussie households are increasingly looking to renewable options that work for them to slash their power bills.' A battery for a modern electric vehicle enabled for V2G charging is 50 to 100 kWh, while a plug-in hybrid battery starts from 20 kWh. A typical home battery is six to 10 kWh, meaning the battery in a typical EV is much more powerful than one on the side of a house. Clarke bought his Nissan Leaf in April 2023 after researching home batteries and realising that the cost per kilowatt hour of storage was significantly lower in a car. 'I got a 60 kWh battery for $60,000, while a Tesla Powerwall costs $15,000 for 13 kWh,' he says. The possibilities are enormous. When EVs become batteries on wheels, a city full of solar on rooftops and EVs in driveways becomes a distributed power plant, making it more possible to switch off the ageing coal-fired power fleet. By the early 2030s, the combined battery capacity of all EVs in Australia is likely to surpass all other forms of storage in the national energy market, including Snowy 2.0, according to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency's national road map for bidirectional EV charging. By 2050, the storage in the national EV fleet is likely to be three times higher than the total storage capacity in the national energy market. Yet, the road map notes, the capital cost of enabling vehicle-to-grid technology is a fraction of the cost to build large-scale storage. Loading Electric Vehicle Council analysis suggests EVs with V2G technology could bring down costs for everyone by reducing the need for the highest-price electricity generation and reducing the need for network augmentation to cope with the handful of days a year when the system operates at maximum capacity. The lobby group wants the government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program, a subsidy that started on Tuesday, to extend to the V2G charging infrastructure for EVs. V2G charging requires three things. First, the vehicle needs to be capable and have it enabled. In some models, the capability is switched off or using it would void the warranty. Dr Alina Dini, head of energy and infrastructure at the Electric Vehicle Council, says three V2G-ready cars imported into Australia are the Nissan Leaf, the Mitsubishi Outlander and Cupra, while there is also the Ford F-150 Lightning made compatible with Australian V2G standards by after-market modifications by AUSEV. Second, the charger needs to be approved by the Clean Energy Council. Finally, the network needs to allow it and the retailer to offer pricing to support it. Things are moving rapidly. Ausgrid, the electricity distributor for much of Sydney, flagged on Tuesday it had successfully plugged a vehicle-to-grid system into its network, enabling a two-way flow of energy that effectively turns EVs into batteries on wheels. Loading Ausgrid's head of EVs, Nick Black, says some retailers have been early adopters involved in testing how it would work, so there are already offers in the market. Black says the technology will be a game changer for the grid, eventually. 'We just need that EV adoption in place,' Black says. 'There's still a low penetration of EVs, and we see that due to a lack of highly available public charging infrastructure.' The company is lobbying the NSW government to change the rules to allow it to directly own and maintain public EV chargers on its power poles, a proposal fiercely resisted by standalone EV-charging companies. Essential Energy, which covers 95 per cent of NSW, said V2G charging for AUSEV's Ford F-150 Lightning was market-ready at the Smart Energy Conference in April, after a long period testing the Nissan Leaf. The power distributor and CSIRO are investigating V2G technology with other car manufacturers. Endeavour Energy, the third NSW network, has also been trialling V2G technology and said it would allow any charger approved by the Clean Energy Council. In Victoria, the company that covers Melbourne and much of regional Victoria through ownership of Powercor, CitiPower and United Energy has been running a trial of V2G charging and is preparing to roll it out more widely. Daniel Bye, Powercor head of customer connections and requests, says the company would treat vehicle-to-grid chargers the same as any other battery connected to the network, and any charger approved by the Clean Energy Council would automatically be approved. 'We're really excited by the possibilities V2X technology offers our customers and the community,' Bye says. (The V2X term includes vehicle to grid, vehicle to home, and vehicle to load – the final one being when you can plug in appliances such as power tools or camping fridges directly into the battery.) Loading In financial modelling by the Electric Vehicle Council, a customer in western Sydney who has an electricity plan with exposure to the wholesale price of electricity (such as Amber Electric) could earn $1000 a year by charging an EV when the cost of electricity is low and discharging to the grid between 6pm and 10pm every day. A customer with a power plan with time-of-use tariffs (such as OVO Energy) could save $500 a year by charging the EV battery when the electricity is free during the day and using it to power their appliances when the price goes up in the evening. 'It's an opportunity for something that sits statically in a driveway or a car park to be a way to help consumers not only save money but potentially even earn from it,' says Electric Vehicle Council chief executive Julie Delvecchio. 'It transfoms what an electric vehicle is, from just a car to a method to support the grid, which I think is really significant.' The Clarkes already had a 10 kWh solar system, but the power bills were still about $3000 a year before they moved to Amber Electric, and the petrol for the car was $3000 a year. A year later, Francis Clarke has a credit of $400 on his electricity bill, after powering both his house and car, despite having driven 26,000 kilometres. As well as the financial rewards, Clarke is interested in the environmental benefits. 'I'm naturally interested in saving carbon whenever I can, and I think I've done the right thing in my farming and forestry businesses, too, with all the trees I've planted,' Clarke says. 'I've been aware of that for a long time, and it's nice now that I can have a car and run it virtually carbon-free. Saving money is a good thing, but knowing you're doing the right thing by the environment is also a good thing.'
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Game changer': Your electric vehicle can now power your home and the grid
The rest of Australia will soon be able to do what farming couple Francis and Vivica Clarke have been doing for more than a year – selling the energy stored in their electric vehicle back to the grid. The Clarkes, who live on a property near Tarago, south of Goulburn, NSW, and bought a Nissan Leaf in April 2023, were part of a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology trial through their electricity network Essential Energy and retailer Amber Electric. They've made a killing. When two units went out at Eraring power station in NSW in May last year, they made $570 in two hours. When a similar event happened at Yallourn in Victoria last month, they made $370. Having signed up to a pilot program, the couple are among the first in Australia to profit from what is known as vehicle-to-grid, or bidirectional charging, allowing people to store power in their car batteries during the day when the sun is out and power is cheap, and sell it back during the evening peak. Francis Clarke, 85, has heard criticism that this is something only the wealthy can afford, but he argues that he is actually making power cheaper for other people. 'Everybody turns around and says, 'Oh you rich toffs – you can afford all these things and that's going to make our power more expensive,'' Clarke says. 'In fact it's not, because with me supplying power to the grid when it's in need, I'm supplying power to my neighbours. It doesn't require any poles and wires to be built, nor any high-tension leads to come in from God knows where. My power is being used locally, and the community doesn't have to pay for any of the storage that I'm paying for myself.' Electricity distributors all over Australia have been running pilot studies for V2G charging around the country for about two years now. Standards Australia ticked off on the standard last year, and now electricity distributors such as Ausgrid are starting to green-light the capacity across their networks. The technology is branded as a game changer for the energy revolution because it bolsters the shift from the antiquated notion of 'baseload power' to a modern distributed network. This in turn hastens the demise of the ageing coal-fired power fleet.
7NEWS
07-07-2025
- 7NEWS
Mitsubishi blames Australian Government for weak EV demand
Mitsubishi has long prioritised plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) over pure electric vehicles (EVs) in Australia, but it says it would sell more EVs here if the country's charging infrastructure was up to scratch. The Japanese brand has only ever sold one EV in Australia: the i-MiEV micro car between 2010 and 2012. It has since shifted its attention to PHEVs, introducing Outlander PHEV in 2017 and later the Eclipse Cross PHEV in 2021. Despite that, Mitsubishi Motors Australia president and CEO Shaun Westcott told CarExpert that Mitsubishi isn't against selling more EVs in Australia, and reinforced the Japanese auto brand's plans to introduce one co-developed with Taiwanese firm Foxtron in late 2026. 'We will bring product. We have no problem in bringing product. We have product, and we can demonstrate that. We have multiple Alliance partners. We have EVs in other countries,' he said. Hundreds of new car deals are available through CarExpert right now. Get the experts on your side and score a great deal. Browse now. ABOVE: Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV Mr Westcott is referring to Mitsubishi's industrial alliance with Nissan and Renault, which has borne a handful of other EVs overseas including the European Eclipse Cross EV, a rebadged Renault Scenic E-Tech, while Mitsubishi has also previewed its own version of the third-generation Nissan Leaf. But Mr Westcott pointed out that several of Mitsubishi's rival brands in Australia have introduced EVs to lukewarm reception, and he suggested that cooling demand for EVs is not just due to the lack of EV chargers but the fact battery-electric vehicles still rely largely on coal-fired power in most Australian states. 'As we sit here today, we have competitors in market who have EVs in their brand, that I can tell you as a fact are sitting in their showroom and they've been sitting there for months, and they can't sell them,' he said. 'Those companies have to discount those costs below the cost of production just to get them to move out of the showroom. That is not sustainable. ABOVE: Nissan Leaf 'So, despite all the political commentary around it, it's not the lack of EVs that's causing the problem. It's the lack of investment by government… in the infrastructure. And when we talk about infrastructure, this is not just chargers; there's a gap between the chargers and the source of energy.' Mr Westcott explained that the vast majority of electricity in Australian states like New South Wales is still generated by coal – a claim backed by NSW Resources that states coal makes up 'approximately 80 per cent of the electricity produced in NSW'. 'Then you add gas and other fossil fuels on top of that, you get to about 90 per cent, and you now have zero tailpipe emissions, but all you're doing is you're polluting in Lithgow [a major electricity production region] – well, mate, the wind blows from Lithgow to Sydney as well,' he said. 'All you've done is shift the emissions from the tailpipe to the power station.' ABOVE: Renault Scenic E-Tech Mr Westcott continued by saying an additional challenge was transporting electricity produced via renewable methods like solar or wind, another area in which he said infrastructure investment and planning have been lacking. 'Getting the energy from there to where the car is to where the charger is, requires significant – and I'm talking billions of dollars – investment in infrastructure, but I haven't seen any plans for that yet,' he said. 'And I know there are some plans, but I'm seeing challenges in getting that turned into reality. So there's a gap between where we are today, practically speaking, the reality, and the ambition.' There are current plans to modernise Australia's electricity grid, as evidenced by the National Renewable Energy Priority List, for example. The list outlines 56 'priority projects' which could provide an additional 16 gigaWatts of electricity generation – though this has yet to be fully approved through the necessary processes at all levels of government. ABOVE: Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Mr Westcott says these factors are why Mitsubishi is 'pushing PHEV', a powertrain type that he says has the mechanical capability to support the driving habits of most Australians. That's despite 25,613 PHEVs having been sold in the first six months of 2025, compared to 47,145 EVs. 'We have access to our customers' information on that … they drive their car in pure EV [mode] 83 per cent of the time. For most people's daily commute [~30km on average], the PHEV battery covers that. Our range exceeds that,' he said. 'I can travel for two or three days without charging my car. I have solar at work, I have solar home. I have zero emissions, in my case, 93 per cent of the time… right here today, with no infrastructure. 'On the topic of the FBT [fringe benefits tax], I think that not extending the FBT [exemption] on PHEVs was a major problem, major mistake, because we could reduce emissions dramatically right here today, just by promoting PHEVs and taking away all that range anxiety and all those other concerns [of EVs].
