FROM GOODHEW ELECTRICAL AND SOLAR
As more Australians switch to electric vehicles, our homes, energy use, grid reliance and storage capacity is changing.
A typical home battery stores around 10-15 kilowatt-hours of energy, whereas an electric vehicle on average has between 50 – 100kWh of storage capacity. The price per kilowatt hour of both a standard home lithium battery and an electric vehicle is comparable. Essentially, buying an Electric Vehicle is almost like paying for the battery and getting the rest of the car as a bonus.
Therein lies the ability to use electric vehicles as a battery while it’s sitting in the driveway or garage. Using a vehicle to home charger, the vehicle’s battery can power the home when the grid goes down, during peak events or for general use at night.
To understand how vehicle to home energy exchange can happen, it’s important to know the difference between current EV charging technologies available in the Australian market.
Firstly, conventional electric car chargers include those included with your vehicle or as an upgrade from the manufacturer or a third-party. These ‘level 1’ chargers are often single and, in most cases, draw power directly from the grid, delivering an output around 2.5kW/h.
Solar EV chargers are the next technology type. These chargers are integrated with your existing solar power system and allow your home to benefit from ‘power optimisation’. These chargers intelligently monitor the power generated by your solar system and the home’s consumption in real time to ensure that excess energy is being sent straight to the EV and not fed back to the grid at a lower rate.
Based on a standard 6.6kW solar system, the time taken to charge a new Hyundai Kona EV battery from 20% is approximately seven hours. The range for this vehicle, like similar EV models is 390-400km. This means the average owner who is travelling locally to work or school, can charge the vehicle using solar during the day on the weekend, and have enough range for the whole week. For a 10kW solar system, the charge time from 20% is dramatically reduced to approximately five hours.
The final technology includes Vehicle to House (V2H) or Vehicle to Grid (V2G) Chargers known as Bidirectional chargers. Bidirectional chargers allow you to use your vehicle’s battery to power your home as discussed above. When integrated with the latest smart metering technology, these chargers also afford the same benefits to that of a solar EV charger including power optimisation and minimising exported energy.
Goodhew Electrical and Solar is one of Brisbane’s largest and longest established solar retailers. We have several EV charging products available and as a Tesla Accredited Installer, we can tailor a solution to meet your needs. Chat to a Goodhew Energy Consultant today for more information on EV charging, vehicle to home charging, and solar power optimisation.
