Australia greenlights vehicle to grid household standards

The federal government in Australia has announced new standards for vehicle to home (V2H) and vehicle to grid (V2G) charging, enabling households to tap into the tech to use EVs to power their home and feed back into the grid during peak periods.

The standards were officially announced by Chris Bowen, the country’s minister for climate change and energy, during a speech at the 2024 Sydney International EV show.

According to Bowen, the standards follow the government’s announcement of the National Consumer Energy Resources (CER) Roadmap, which aims to enable consumers to offset the need for grid investment with CER technologies.

Said Bowen on the new vehicle to grid milestone: “I’m very pleased to announce today that one of the important milestones in the Consumer Energy Roadmap has been ticked and that Standards Australia has ticked off the new standard that will allow vehicle to grid charging in Australia…no longer will charging be a one-way street.”

Rather, with V2G and V2H, consumers will be able to charge and discharge back to the grid depending on peak demand periods on the grid.

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During the standards announcement, Bowen commented on the opportunity provided by consumers having clean technology resources, including those “on their roof, in their garage – in their battery in the garage, and increasingly in the battery that sits in their driveway.

“The battery that sits in their driveway will in almost all circumstances be much more powerful than the battery that’s in their garage.

“And we’ve got to ensure that all those resources are working not just for the grid, for the country, but for the consumers, or increasingly what we call prosumers – people who are producing and consuming at the same time – producing energy and consuming energy.”

According to Bowen, the next step in the V2G roadmap is for manufacturers who enable V2G charging and charging companies to register their products with the Clean Energy Council.

“They’ll have to meet the standard that’s been ticked off by Standards Australia, but where we’ve got manufacturers and OEMs who are on board for that and it all happens smoothly, we’ll be able to have bi-directional charging a reality by Christmas this year.

Financing announcements

Bowen’s statement was accompanied by an announcement of AU$100 million ($65.4 million) being made available for heavy vehicle decarbonisation through the country’s renewable energy agency ARENA.

Additionally, Bowen announced support for two specific e-mobility companies – Linfox and Toll.

Linfox, an Australian transport and logistics company, will receive AU$19.6 million ($12.8 million) to roll out 26 battery electric trucks across their distribution centres in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.

Toll, an Australian logistics company that invests in EV charging and charging infrastructure, will receive AU$9 million ($5.9 million) to deploy 28 battery electric trucks and supporting infrastructure at their 10 sites across the country.

“We’ve already done quite a bit with both of those companies, but we’re doing more because them decarbonising their fleets is good for them, reduces their running costs, and importantly, it’s very good for their drivers,” said Bowen.

“Vehicle to grid charging is now ticked, enabled under the law of the land and will become a reality before Christmas, in the real world.”

An optimistic study but a market-based pain point

Bowen’s announcements follows a landmark vehicle to grid research test in Australia earlier this year in February, when V2G was able to successfully backup the power grid in the face of extreme weather and its toll on power grid reliability.

At the time, 16 EVs were plugged into chargers at six properties across Canberra, about 500km from the location of downed transmission lines.

All 16 vehicles discharged at their constrained maximum of 5kW within 60 seconds of the frequency trigger and remained at this power level for 10 minutes, as specified by the Australian National Electricity Market rules for contingency frequency services.

In total, they provided 107kW of support to the national grid.

According to Dr Bjorn Sturmberg, lead author of the study ‘Vehicle-to-grid response to a frequency contingency in a national grid – successes and shortcomings’, it was the first time in the world this type of (V2G) response to an emergency had been demonstrated.

However, the data also revealed shortcomings of current V2G implementation, as well as the market-driven approach to frequency control that they are designed for.

This can be seen in the chargers’ behaviour immediately after the ten minutes of required discharging, when nine chargers began to charge at their maximum power of 6.3kW.

“Additionally, in the case of the February emergency, once the vehicles had provided power for ten minutes some resumed charging by default. There would be little cost or inconvenience in delaying charging for an hour or two in this kind of situation,” said Sturmberg.