Australian retailer assesses Vehicle-to-Home business case

Australian utility Simply Energy has partnered with distributed energy resources (DER) manager Sunverge, automaker Nissan, and electric vehicle (EV) charging firm Wallbox to pilot the vehicle-to-home business case.

Sunverge will provide its DER and energy management platform, Nissan its LEAF EVs, and Wallbox its EV charging solution to ensure real-time management and control of EV charging and batteries for the reliability of Simply Energy’s grid network.

EVs will be used as mobile batteries to provide flexible capacity, frequency regulation, and base and peak load management services. This will enable the utility to retire the use of conventional energy resources used to provide baseload electricity.

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The launch of the programme comes at a time global utilities are struggling with the fluctuating nature of renewable energy and their inability to supply baseload power. Utilities are also facing the challenge of an increase in energy demand associated with EV charging. However, as the number of EVs increase, real-time management of charging will enable utilities to avoid the straining of the grid. Optimal management of EV charging provides new revenue streams and business cases such as Time of Use tariffs.

Sunverge, Nissan, and Wallbox will jointly study the opportunities around advanced Vehicle-to-Grid capabilities such as frequency regulation and response.

Martin Milani, CEO of Sunverge, said: “The electrification of transportation along with electrification of homes and commercial buildings are two of the vital trends integral to decarbonising the world’s energy infrastructure.

“That effort will require expanded control, orchestration, and aggregation of power from electric vehicles offering utilities a way to harness them as distributed energy resources. The grid can manage the proliferation of EVs more efficiently and reliably while aggregating and orchestrating EVs with other DERs…”

Ryan Wavish of Simply Energy, added that the project is part of the utility’s journey towards carbon neutrality and will “help speed up the electrification of transportation and make EVs an integral part of the smart grid of the future.”