A new study has found ev's could prevent power outages spreading to tens of thousands of homes.
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00:00The power system in the Eastern Seaboard goes from South Australia to Queensland and it's
00:06all interconnected.
00:07So when there's a loss of power in Melbourne, particularly when the Loy Yang coal-fired
00:12power station went offline, which is Victoria's largest generator, we then need to find more
00:17power across the Eastern Seaboard.
00:19And so we had 16 electric vehicles plugged into the grid here in Canberra in offices
00:25or in garages of the ACT government.
00:27They noticed this drop in power supply and within seconds started to discharge power
00:32to the grid.
00:33And now as only 16 vehicles, they provided a very modest amount of that power that needed
00:38to be found to rebalance the exit of the coal plant.
00:43But it's a sign of the future where we'll have many more electric vehicles that can
00:46do this.
00:47And so, I mean, you didn't know this blackout was going to happen, but were you preparing
00:50to test an event just like that?
00:53Yeah, so we've spent years kind of preparing this technology, rolling out.
00:57There's in fact 51 electric vehicles in the ACT that are set up to do this.
01:03And they have special charges that are able to pull power out of the vehicles as well
01:06as the normal charging.
01:09And they've been ready for years now.
01:11And thankfully, these sorts of emergencies only happen very infrequently.
01:15And so this was the first time that since our vehicles have been prepared, that we had
01:20such a major event in the national electricity system.
01:24While it was happening, though, I mean, were you worried under this test that things could
01:28have actually been made worse by them?
01:30No, no, not at all.
01:32We'd done extensive testing, including of the vehicles in our lab at ANU, and we were
01:37very confident that they were going to do exactly what was required, which is to respond
01:42and inject power very quickly.
01:45And how quickly were the cars able to go from charging to discharging?
01:48Yeah, so four of the vehicles were charging at the time that the storm knocked down these
01:52transmission lines, and they within 60 seconds stopped charging and started to discharge
01:58at their full power.
01:59And there were another 12 that were idle at the time of the event, and that also within
02:0360 seconds started to discharge.
02:06Now that 60 seconds is actually due to some regulations around the grid.
02:10In our lab, we were able to see the same vehicles and the same charges provide their power with
02:15under six seconds.
02:17When would all EV models be able to do this?
02:20So currently only Japanese manufactured vehicles, Nissan and Mitsubishi, have the technology
02:25to do this.
02:26But as of next year, there's a new software standard for how vehicles interact with charges.
02:33That's being updated early next year, and that will provide most vehicles the capability
02:39of doing this.
02:40Now, it still requires that the vehicle manufacturer allows this to happen, in particular to provide
02:46a warranty for it to happen, but there's been a lot of talk from major manufacturers
02:51like VW, Ford, BYD, which is the Chinese manufacturer, to provide this service.