EV owners plugged in
A CAR that can power your home – and cut your electricity bills – is edging closer to reality.
Early next year, energy provider AGL and carmaker Nissan will begin a trial of vehicle-to-grid technology. As part of the trial, 50 EV owners will install a wall charger in their home that will allow them to feed electricity into their car’s battery during the day and then use it to power their house at night, when electricity is at its most expensive.
The tech will make it possible for EV owners to reduce their power bills and even sell excess electricity back to the grid at times. Similar trials have been running in Japan since 2015 and more than 7000 customers have participated.
The technology has wider applications as well.
In Japan, Nissan EVs have been used by emergency services to provide mobile back-up power generation in areas hit by earthquakes and typhoons.
Fleets of EVs have been deployed to disaster areas to power hospitals and other essential services.
A separate trial running in Canberra at the moment is drawing power from stationary EVs owned by the ACT government to cover blackouts caused by damaged power lines. Nissan’s EV manager Ben Graham said electric vehicles had the ability to transform the automotive and energy markets. “The automotive market is going through the biggest transition it’s been through since it was created,” Graham said.
At the same time, the energy market was also evolving as renewables such as wind and solar came online, he said.
Winery owner Joseph Evans has been waiting to hook his Nissan Leaf up to his home for two years. The South Australian plans to use the car as a giant battery to store electricity created by the solar panels on his roof. He first saw vehicle-togrid (V2G) technology in operation in California in
2015 and has been on a waiting list for an inverter box since 2019. He initially looked at buying a Tesla power wall to store his solar, but worked out the Leaf was a more economical solution. He’s travelled 28,000km in the Leaf and hasn’t paid a cent because it’s charged off the solar panels.