Australians have been given the green light to use their electric vehicles (EVs) to power their homes and sell electricity back to the grid, in a practice known as vehicle-to-grid or V2G charging.
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Standards Australia has approved regulations for vehicle-to-grid charging to enable EV owners to use their vehicle battery to power their home and provide dispatchable electricity to the grid during peak demand.
As ‘batteries on wheels’, EVs can power homes during blackouts, absorb excess solar power to use during periods of peak demand, and sell electricity back to the grid when it’s needed most.
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said the federal government aimed to make vehicle-to-grid charging a reality by Christmas.
“This is a good step forward,” he said.
“That means that [EV owners] now have skills and opportunities available to them to put themselves in charge of when they charge their car, and when they use the energy in their car to charge their grid or their house.
“We’ve been working on this for a long time in partnership with states and territories.”
Not all EVs in the Australian market are capable of this kind of bi-directional charging, with only the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi Outlander and Eclipse Cross PHEV offering this technology.
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Bowen said, “Now the process is that car manufacturers and charging manufacturers can register their produces with the clean energy council who will be our regulator for this, and if it complies with the Australian standard, they’ll be able to get that registered and underway.”
