AGL and Nissan to begin trial of vehicle-to-grid technology

A car that can power your home – and cut your electricity bills – is edging closer to reality.

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.

Electric vehicles such as Nissan’s Lead e+ have the ability to transform both the automotive and energy markets.

Ben Graham, Nissan’s EV manager, said electric vehicles had the ability to transform both 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.

Unlike coal-powered stations, which send power one way from the grid to the final user, wind and solar allow individuals to create their own power and potentially feed that back into the grid.

“People are buying and selling power from their own house.”

Wind and solar power are intermittent, though, which means there is a need for reliable storage.

At the moment solar panels only produce electricity when the sun is shining, while people use it most at night.

The peak period for electricity usage is from 5pm to 9pm.

“We’re going to need more batteries in the system and electric vehicles have very big ones,” he said.

Nissan’s Leaf e+ has a 62kWh battery so “you’ve got three to four Power walls sitting in your driveway.

At the moment, popular home batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall cost roughly $13,000 installed for a 13.5kWh battery. The average home uses roughly 20-25kWh a day.

Nissan’s Leaf e+ has a 62kWh battery, so “you’ve got three to four Power walls sitting in your driveway,” he said.

“Cars spend 90 per cent of their time sitting in a carpark, so you’re taking one of your least utilised assets and turning it into potentially one of your most utilised, providing both mobility and storage,” Edwards said.

The average return commute uses roughly 6kWh, leaving plenty of capacity for powering the house.

A household with solar panels and vehicle to grid technology could “pretty much wipe out your whole bill” for electricity.

He said the technology was already available, but significant regulatory hurdles remained.

“It’s a simple concept but at a practical and regulatory level it gets pretty complicated pretty quickly.”

One of the biggest concerns about widespread adoption of EVs is the strain they will put on the grid, but properly managed, EVs can potentially increase grid capacity.

“EVs can either be an asset to the grid or a liability depending on how and when they are charged.”

The Nissan Leaf e+ can be programmed to charge overnight, when demand is low and electricity is cheap.

The current grid is built for peak demand between 5pm and 9pm. Outside of those hours, there’s surplus energy, particularly in the middle of the day and middle of the night.

“If everyone is driving an EV and they all plug in at the same time, the grid wouldn’t be able to handle it but there are really easy solutions to that,” Edwards said.

Vehicle to grid technology allowed people to remove their house from the grid during peak periods.

“All of a sudden you’ve got this situation where you’re not further contributing to the strain on the grid during that peak period, you’re actually removing your house from that,” he said.

The Nissan Leaf, for example, can be programmed to charge overnight, when demand is low and electricity is cheap. The lure of cheap electricity then becomes an incentive for owners to recharge outside of peak times.

At the moment, the cost of smart chargers (about $2000 to $3000 installed) and vehicle-to-grid inverters ($10,000) are a huge barrier to take-up, but prices are dropping and experts are aiming to eventually keep the payback time below six years.

Edwards said it was important to develop infrastructure that would allow people to charge their EVs at work, when demand for electricity is low.

He called for the government to focus on putting chargers into commuter and work car parks.

There’s also the possibility that people with vehicle to grid charging could recharge at free public charging stations and use that to power their homes at night.

‘WE SAVE $2000 A YEAR ON FUEL’

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-to-grid (V2G) technology in operation in California in 2015 and has been on a waiting list for an inverter box since 2019.

Delays in gaining regulatory approval for the technology have stymied his efforts, but he is hoping to be one of 50 Leaf owners to trial the system early next year.

He initially looked at buying a Tesla powerwall to store his solar, but worked out the Leaf was a more economical solution.

Winery owner Joseph Evans has been waiting to hook his Nissan Leaf up to his home for two years, pictured with wife Sue and dog Tama, at Ballycroft Vineyard and Cellars in Greenock. Picture: Tom Huntley

“If I purchased three wall batteries that’s 36kW of power – 12kW each – and it would cost me $36,000 to purchase them. Instead I bought a $50,000 Leaf which has a 40kW battery in it and I’m getting a new car for $10,000,” he said.

He’s travelled 28,000km in the Leaf and hasn’t paid a cent because it’s charged off the solar panels.

The Leaf easily does the 160km round-trip from the winery to Adelaide for deliveries, arriving home with about 100km of range left.

“We save about $2000 a year on fuel and if I get the V2G converter we’ll save $1700 on night-time power,” he said.

The converter isn’t cheap at about $9000 installed, but Joe is happy to wait five years for the payback.

“The main reason I’m doing it is to be self-sufficient. The second is to save the planet and thirdly, in the long run, it saves you money,” he said.