Electric vehicles (EVs) can be charged at home using the relatively free power of rooftop solar. Many EV brands also have the ability to supply power to devices, specific home circuits or to the power grid. These features are often referred generally as V2x, where a car may have more than one ability to transfer power to a third party device or network.
- Vehicle to Load (V2L) – already present in many EVs – allows external appliances to be powered by the vehicle.
- Vehicle to Home (V2H) technology could make a significant difference to a household’s electricity bills and provide critical support in emergencies, such as blackouts
- Vehicle to Grid (V2G) can help support the reliability and stability of the broader network.
EVs are ideal for storing power because they have significant sized batteries. Compared to a typical storage battery or around 13 kWh, a car such as a BYD Atto3 has a car battery size of 64 kWh.
Vehicle to load (V2L) discussion
RACV Article: Newton, B 2024, What is Vehicle to Load (V2L) for electric vehicles?
Bruce Newton discusses V2L and its potential to provide emergency power when natural disasters prevail.
Examples of how V2L has helped Australians
Emergency situations such as electricity grid blackouts have also proved V2L’s worth. It’s feasible to run a power cable from your electric vehicle’s battery to your home to keep key items like a refrigerator operational. There is also a well known example of a Gold Coast family keeping their son’s dialysis machine running during a blackout by plugging in their BYD Atto 3 EV.
“There was significant flooding in Lismore a couple of years ago and we had early Ioniq 5 owners running around the neighbourhood plugging in high pressure hoses to their cars to clean up people’s houses and fences, just generally helping out,” says Hyundai Australia Strategic Planning Assistant Manager Simon Bartnik.
V2L solutions can be as easy as running an extension cord to run an appliance such as a refrigerator. It is also possible to supply power to specific circuits which offer critical power supply such as lights and refrigeration.
Or you can have an electrician install what’s called a change-over switch. This isolates a chosen circuit in the home and is usually intended to allow a generator to be plugged in. It also allows the car’s battery pack to plug in and power key functions in the house or charge the generator that’s plugged into the change-over switch’s socket.
An economical power supply for work and play
Tradies often rely on diesel and petrol generators to supply on-site power, so the more environmentally friendly V2L would work well for them. There will soon be a number of utes with V2L capability, including the BYD Shark 6 PHEV that’s due before the end of the year and the Ford Ranger PHEV.
Newton lists the current electric vehicles which offer V2L, which includes major EV and PHEV brands such as BYD, MG, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis (prestige brand of Hyundai). A notable accept is Tesla, however newer offerings will include V2L.
ABC Article: Abbott, S 2024, Blackouts in Tasmania highlight the ability of electric cars to power household appliances
Sarah Abbott discusses how BYDs supplied power in Tasmania when power was out at home for an extended time. She gives two examples of how BYD car owners kept critical household or businesses running such as the home refrigerator. A ‘tulip farm co-owner David Roberts-Thomson and his family’ were able to keep their business running despite a multiple day power outage.
YouTube videos on V2L
Ecotricity NZ 2023, After disaster: Deploying BYD Atto 3 electric cars as mobile power stations (V2L)
Gavin Shoebridge of Ecotricity discusses how he is going to use his BYD Atto 3 to help power electricity users by connecting the vehicle’s BYD to homes which have experienced a power outage because of a damaging storm on the North Island of New Zealand.
Vehicle to home
RACV 2025, Guide to bidirectional charging in Australia: V2G, V2H & V2L
Vehicle to Home (V2H) technology could make a significant difference to a household’s electricity bills and provide critical support in emergencies, such as blackouts, while Vehicle to Grid (V2G) can help support the reliability and stabiity of the broader network. These capabilities are in addition to Vehicle to Load (V2L) – already present in many EVs – which allows external appliances to be powered by the vehicle.
At the moment, there is a limitation on vehicles which will be capable of bi-directional charge to the home or to the grid. The only charging standard currently which can support this is incorporated into Japanese products such as the EV Nissan Leaf and certain Mitsubishi PHEV brands. This charging standard is known as CHAdeMo (Charge de Move) whereas the bulk of EV and PHEV offerings use CCS2 (Combined Charging System Combo 2). According to the RACV article, the Australian government is planning to release a new standard so that electric vehicles using CCS2 will be able to configure with bidirectional charging units to power the home/business and/or the national grid.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) also recently released a roadmap outlining the path to widespread adoption of bidirectional charging. ARENA estimates that 300,000 V2G-capable EVs will be running in Australia by 2030, providing huge potential as an energy source for not only individual homes but all households across the nation via the grid.
Vehicle to Grid
Engineering with Rosie 2024, Vehicle To Grid: Is the Future of Energy in Your Garage?
Rosie visits South Australia where she finds some compelling real world examples of how V2L and V2G are operating. She alludes to upcoming changes to Australian regulations which will make EV batteries an economical way of solving peak power shortfalls in the national grid.
ABC Article: Purtill, J 2024, V2G, which can turn EVs into giant home batteries, is coming to some cars in 2025
Technology reporter James Purtill provides a 2025 update to Rosie’s review of the V2G and V2L landscape. He discusses the real benefits of lower power costs, where industry standards are at, and provides some concrete examples by way of real world installations in South Australia.
Vehicle to Grid: technical details
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology allows an electric vehicle (EV) to not only draw power from the grid for charging but also to send stored energy back to the grid when needed.
ARENA Analysis: Jones, L, Lucas-Healey, K, Sturmberg, B, Temby, H, Islam, M 2021, The A to Z of V2G: A comprehensive analysis of vehicle-to-grid technology worldwide
This 141 page analysis provides a thorough technical report on the current thinking for using electric vehicles to support a highly distributed national grid which uses predominantly renewable energy to supply customers with electricity.
News media dedicated to electric vehicles
This is the official website for The Driven, a web magazine which is devoted to electric vehicles and related services.
Renew magazine | Electric vehicles
Renew magazine has a dedicated web page which is a portal to information about electric vehicles in a Q&A format. There are also links to other articles that Renew provides.