00:00Richard Chapman is a very modern type of car man.
00:06He loves cars, but he's also obsessed with all things tech.
00:10Oh, it's epic. Yeah, it's so good.
00:13It's one of the reasons he was such an early adopter of electric vehicles, or EVs.
00:17At his home in the Perth suburb of South Fremantle, he uses solar power to charge the car for a pittance.
00:23Ideally, he'd also like to use the energy stored in his car's battery to power his house when the sun goes down.
00:30When the main house batteries have run out, I want to then be able to draw off of the electric vehicles that I've got hundreds of kilowatt hours sitting there.
00:40But there's a catch. His car maker won't let him.
00:43Tesla are very reluctant to have you do that, at least on the cars that they currently sell in Australia.
00:48At issue is a little known technology that some say has big potential.
00:52It's called a few things, including vehicle to grid and bi-directional charging.
00:56It involves not only charging EVs so they can be driven around, but discharging them as well to power appliances,
01:02help run a household, or even sell power to the grid.
01:05The big golden pot at the end of the rainbow of vehicle to grid is that if we have a couple of million cars
01:12that are able to export to the grid at peak time, will mean that we can do things like close down coal-fired power stations.
01:19We're in the cheap power 9am to 3pm window.
01:23The Federal Government backs the technology and is calling on car makers to get on board.
01:27While I certainly encourage car manufacturers to get with the program, consumers will want this
01:31and I think consumers will march with their feet.
01:33Australia's uptake of EVs is still relatively subdued.
01:36About one in ten new car sales is electric, but that's expected to grow markedly in the years ahead,
01:42providing what experts say is a massive opportunity for the electricity system.
01:47From there we need the homeowner to be rewarded for vehicle to grid.
01:51They're not going to support the grid just because it's a nice thing to do.
01:55EV owner Richard Chapman, for one, is raring to go.
01:59We've got all this battery storage around all in our suburbs and what we need to do is tap into that
02:04because we've got all of this solar.
02:06An EV revolution at risk of being stalled.
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