Charging ahead with EV technology

By  Ruth Dawkins ,  Scott Walker ,  Anne Keen 16 October 2024 5 min read

It’s safe to say that Australia is in the midst of a surge in electric vehicle (EV) adoption. In fact, with the Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) reporting a doubling of sales from last year, the country is on track to reach 100,000 new EVs on the road in 2024.

As these numbers continue to increase, it is crucial to understand EVs’ impact on Australia’s electricity grid and the opportunities integration into the network provides consumers.

We recently partnered with Essential Energy, one of Australia’s largest electricity distribution networks, to trial vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology as part of the home electricity management system. V2G allows for bidirectional electricity flow, enabling the car battery to capture excess rooftop solar generation to run the house and export excess energy into the grid.

"V2G technologies have enormous potential and they’re going to play a big part in the future electricity system, but at the moment our understanding of how they might work in the Australian context is limited,” our Transport Electrification team lead, Kate Cavanagh, said.

“Our project is set in regional Australia, and we are using real household appliances in a laboratory setting to provide a range of realistic and controllable household types and scenarios to test out V2G in the Australian context. This includes a mix of self-consumption, solar-soak (using your own solar power), and grid-export of vehicle battery power.

“We’re looking to demonstrate how EVs can help stabilise the grid, while also allowing everyday consumers to manage their own energy and be quite self-sufficient," Kate said. 

The basics

The idea of using EVs as energy storage was first proposed in the late 1990s, and a small experimental trial in California in 2001 demonstrated that EVs could be used to feed energy back into the grid.

It’s only in the last decade, however, that the concept has gained momentum, with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) noting that more than 80 trials are underway around the world, primarily in Europe.

V2G technology operates through a bidirectional charger that allows two, two-way exchanges of energy between the car, the home and the grid. This enables the EV to become a mobile energy storage system that can capture excess renewable energy when it’s abundant – when the sun is shining and rooftop solar panels are generating surplus power – and supply energy back to the home or the grid during peak demand times.

Senior Research Engineer at our Newcastle Energy Centre and technical lead for the collaboration with Essential Energy, Dr Sam Behrens, outlined the potential benefits.

"At the moment you can buy stationary home storage system and connect it to your home, but those batteries have fairly small storage capacities compared to an EV," Sam said.

"An EV can have more than five times the battery storage of a stationary storage system, and V2G technology will allow us to leverage that and use it in the home.

"If you use your EV to store solar energy as it is generated during the day, you can then use that for nighttime electricity needs. It can also be used to support the grid, enhancing reliability and resilience by flattening peak loads."

Essential Energy Chief Operating Officer, Luke Jenner, said the use of a bi-directional charger can transform EVs from being just a vehicle into a part of the future energy solution.

"Trialling V2G technology is an important part of supporting customers to gain better value from their rooftop solar and electric vehicle batteries," Luke said.

"V2G technology also has potential to lead to lower costs for all customers by helping to optimise the flow of energy throughout the network, offsetting the need for additional investment in the network."

An Australian context

V2G technology currently has limited availability for EV owners in Australia. Customers attempting to connect their V2G charger to the grid may encounter regulatory challenges, including complying with current and evolving Australian standards.

And different drivers have motivated the early research so far.

The aim of the CSIRO–Essential Energy trial is to understand how the technology can be integrated into buildings and the broader grid by identifying potential obstacles that could impede its progress as a widely used energy resource for households and businesses in Australia.

The project is based at an innovation hub in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, where Essential Energy has built an electric home of the future for testing ideas. It is equipped with common appliances including a washing machine and dryer, fridge, dishwasher, air-conditioner, hot water system and pool pump.

The hub is also fitted with solar panels and a bidirectional EV charger plugged into a Nissan Leaf. Certain models of the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, and Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross are currently the only EVs on the Australian market that are V2G enabled.

All of these resources and loads are fully controllable, allowing the research team to replicate different household profiles and scenarios. This enables a range of experiments to be conducted on electricity usage patterns, charge and discharge behaviours, and network stability.

"This is really a platform for both organisations to deepen our understanding of how things perform and learn about the technology in the Australian context together," Sam said.

"We can look at the grid impacts and the opportunities in Australia that might be available for Australian consumers to ease their cost of living."

Outcomes and future work

A 2023 ARENA report described bidirectional charging as one of the largest potential enablers in Australia’s energy transition, making clear just how important this technology will be over the coming decades.

While lessons from Europe and the US have helped inform local progress in the V2G space, it is crucial that Australia focuses on research projects that are tailored to its own specific context – in terms of electricity generation and storage, power grids, and technical and regulatory standards.

The findings of this CSIRO-Essential Energy project will be key in those efforts.

"The trial helps Essential Energy prepare the network for the house of the future that will have electric vehicles with the capability, through bidirectional chargers, to power homes and the grid," Luke said.

"The collaboration between CSIRO and Essential Energy will help to develop energy efficient products and services for customers to support them through the energy transition and to trial user-friendly ways to manage home electricity usage."

This article was originally published in Energy Magazine