How long will it be until I can power my house from my EV?

This is the most common question I get when I give public talks on home electrification. Maybe it reflects the circles I travel in, but this V2H opportunity seems to have captured the imagination of many people. And why not? The concept of getting some additional utilisation from your 70kWh battery (5 time larger than most home static batteries) seems to be an obvious next step.?

V2H makes very good sense in Australia. 35% of homes have PV already and many cars reside at home for much of the time, so why not soak up surplus solar in middle of the day - otherwise being spilt into networks that often don’t want it - and use the stored energy in the evenings for heating/cooling. Home batteries remain expensive, and the cost is not coming down at anything like the rate of batteries in cars.?

V2X, particularly V2G (charging back to the grid) has had the appearance of coming in 2 years for the past 5 or 6 years. In this post I ask again when V2H will go mainstream? What is holding up bi-directional charging??

1. Cars using CCS designed to support V2H/G are starting to come to market internationally, but it is happening much slower than expected in Australia. For example, the VW ID 4/5 were planned to be in Australia by now but are not coming till Q4 2024 according to latest reports. Vehicles like the Polestar 3 have announced V2H readiness, but have not yet unlocked this capacity in our market.?
2. Availability and price of chargers – While there are many charger and inverter suppliers looking to get into the market, the pricing of current offerings is generally substantial, and to be attractive as an option to a home battery, the charger price must be a fraction of cost of home battery installation i.e. more like $3k than $6-12k. While there is an expectation that this is where things will settle out once the market scales up, the market won't move much until that happens.
3. Network readiness/approvals process. This should not be a major obstacle when the tech is on the market and SAPN and Ausgrid have already approved connection of the first CHAdeMO chargers.?
4. Controllers/HEMS. To make the V2H most useful, it is important to have a home energy management system to orchestrate solar, EV bi-directional charging and other sources of load flexibility in the home to get the best benefit for the customer and meet site export limits – i.e. to maximise PV utilisation in the house and minimise power export to the grid at low FIT price periods (which currently is all of the time for most retailers). These HEMS are available to do the task, but until regulation on mandatory interoperability sorts out OEMs that do not want their batteries to talk to other systems, it will not be possible to use HEMS to control all V2H.? ?
5. Battery warranty provisions from EV OEMs. This does not look like being a major obstacle, but excessive limits could undermine a customer’s return on investment.?
6. There is still a way to go before network tariffs fully value the ability of V2G/H to provide support during critical peaks. Trials like Project Edith are promising, but there is still no clear pathway to having more dynamic tariffs approved as a mainstream offering.?
7. Other??

There is an important study underway, funded by RACE for 2030 with ARENA, and conducted by Jon Sibley and the team at enX, which seeks to develop a roadmap to V2H/V2G at scale and this should shed more light on the time-line and potential policy enablers. This will feed into the development of a National Strategy for Bidirectional EV chargers foreshadowed by Energy Ministers in July.?

There are lots of V2H/V2G trials going on in Europe in particular, and ARENA has funded an Amber trial which will include V2G/V2H using CCS cars from mid 2025.?

So, will 2025 finally be the year of emerging V2H/V2G in Australia? ?

What should I tell people asking me at public events?

Jon Sibley suggested: ‘My answer would be to buy a vehicle with announced capability (see ev-database.org ) and hold tight for this feature to be unlocked. If you want to get proactive, call up your EV dealership and let them know you are waiting on this feature’.?