One of Australia’s largest energy firms will test whether electric car drivers are willing to plug their vehicles into the grid in exchange for free ‘fuel’.
Origin Energy – the country’s biggest energy retailer – announced a vehicle-to-grid technology trial on Tuesday, revealing it had partnered with automaker BYD and StarCharge to test the technology in car subscription packages.
Fifty customers will be selected to take part in the pilot, which begins next year.
The announcement comes less than a week after the federal government revealed half of all new car sales would need to be electric to meet its 2035 climate target, and months after a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) standard was approved for Australia.
Origin’s technology trial will see participants offered a subscription to a BYD Atto 3 electric car, bundled with a StarCharge V2G Halo bi-directional charger and a dedicated energy tariff.
Charging and discharging the vehicle’s battery would be included under the subscriptions, which are expected to cost about $800 a month.
An average driver covering 12,000km a year could save $2500 a year on fuel or $500 on charging an electric car under the plan, Origin e-mobility general manager Chau Le said, but the pilot program was largely designed to establish how consumers would use V2G technology.
“It is about getting learnings from discharging and charging the vehicle but also understanding EV drivers’ charging behaviour,” she said.
“Following the trial, we’ll be able to come up with what is the most attractive vehicle-to-grid program for EV drivers.”
V2G technology works by connecting a car to a charger that can manage the flow of electricity in two directions – to fuel the vehicle and to feed energy back into the electricity grid.
The large batteries in electric vehicles could help to stabilise the energy network at times of high demand, Ms Le said, and could also be used in place of a separate household battery.
“Vehicle-to-grid is the Holy Grail for us as an energy retailer in the EV space,” she told AAP.
“It unlocks a lot of value from allowing EV drivers to use their car as not just a car… but to be able to use it like a giant battery.”
The Origin V2G trial is scheduled to begin in January with potential takers encouraged to register their interest with the firm.
Although V2G has been slow to launch commercially, the technology has been trialled in Australia by researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra and the CSIRO.
A limited study is also being undertaken by Amber Energy and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, with early results showing one customer had earned up to $250 for selling energy back into the grid during peak periods.
A study for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, conducted by Energeia, found electric car owners had the potential to make as much as $12,000 a year from providing power to the electricity grid.