By Nick Toscano
The uptake of electric vehicles in Australia is predicted to dramatically rise in coming years even without federal policy support, prompting the nation’s energy sector to prepare for a significant upheaval of the market.
Australia lags many countries in the transition to battery-powered cars – less than 1 per cent of Australia’s new car sales are electrics – but power giant Origin Energy forecasts that falling battery costs mean a tipping point is fast approaching.
Origin’s head of e-mobility Chau Le says electric vehicle fleets require more co-ordination than petrol-run fleets.Credit:
“We feel like the tipping point for EV adoption will be when the upfront purchase prices starts to be competitive with petrol vehicles,” said Origin’s head of e-mobility Chau Le.
“The magic number is when batteries get to $100 per kilowatt hour, and we predict that will happen in the next couple of years.”
Electric cars could account for an additional 22 terawatt hours of load on the electricity grid by 2040, according to Origin. This has raised questions in the energy industry about whether Australia’s power networks are ready to handle the influx without overloading and causing blackouts.
Origin has received an $838,000 grant from the federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency to roll out 150 “smart chargers” to electric vehicle owners intended to co-ordinate times that their cars are recharged with periods of surplus solar supply, such as during the middle of the day, and avoid adding strain to peak demand periods on the grid in the evenings.
Evening peak
“If we left EV charging to just whatever people want to do, we expect that the majority of people will come home at 5 or 6pm and charge, which will coincide with the evening peak,” Ms Le said.
“Having millions of these vehicles plug in and draw power at the same time that it is the peak for the energy market, that is going to be a concern ... but if we can manage the charging to smooth that load, to push it into the middle of the day or the middle of the night and not create those peaks for the market and for the network, that itself creates value.”
In the absence of strong petrol emissions standards, and of targets to phase out combustion engines and consumer incentives, Australia’s shift to electric vehicles has been slower than elsewhere. But CSIRO has forecast that electric cars will account for at least 30 per cent of sales by 2035, rising to potentially 90 per cent.
Energy analysts said rising demand growth from electric vehicles would have sweeping implications for power suppliers and grid operators, and companies were becoming increasingly “proactive” in the pursuit of charging strategies and solutions.
“Utilities and grid operators concerned with impacts on the local distribution grid are engaging fleets in pilots and offering EV-specific rates,” said Wood Mackenzie’s Kelly McCoy.
“Additionally, fleet operators are actively pursuing integrating EV charging with other on-site distributed energy resources and their building loads to minimise electricity demand.”
As the flood of rooftop solar and lower daytime prices cause earnings from their traditional businesses to decline, top power giants AGL and Origin are accelerating their push into the electric vehicle market in order to be able to offer a range of energy solutions to customers and find new revenue streams. Origin has launched a new offering of fleets of electric vehicles for corporate customers in a joint venture with Custom Fleet.
For households, many electric vehicles are likely to spend extended periods parked in home garages, Ms Le said, meaning they could work like “batteries on wheels”. When plugged in, car batteries could soak up excess power from rooftop solar panels, dispense it later into virtual power plants – groups of hundreds or thousands of homes with solar and batteries linked up to manage demand and energy flows – and generate a potential profit for customers.
“Learning how to create additional revenue and additional value so we can share that back to our customers is the bit we are really focused on at the moment,” Ms Le said.