EV park and pay is coming

Paying for parking with electricity could become much more than a publicity stunt within a couple of years.

In what it claims is a world-first, Nissan is offering that service to promote the bidirectional vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging capability of its Nissan LEAF electric vehicle at an exhibition it is running in its home city of Yokohoma, Japan.

Electric vehicle owners can pay for parking by discharging energy while visiting the exhibition, which is designed to demonstrate the potential benefits to society of ‘new energy’ vehicles.

But Tim Washington, co-founder of Australian EV charging supplier and installer Jet Charge and the Chargefox charging network, predicts the capability will be available for local EV drivers to exploit soon.

“From a technology perspective it is absolutely possible and will be possible with all [electric] vehicles from about 2022-2023,” said Washington, who is also chair of the Electric Vehicle Council.

That’s when Washington expects fitment of the CCS (Combined Charging System) Type 2 plug with bidirectional charging capability to be much more common in Australia.

At the moment the only vehicle capable of bidirectional charging on sale in Australia without voiding its battery warranty is the second-generation Nissan LEAF, which uses the Chademo plug.

EV manufacturers have agreed going forward to move to a Type 2 plug for AC charging and either a CCS 2 or Chademo plug for DC fast-charging.

Fifty one examples of the Nissan LEAF are involved in a major V2G study in the Australian Capital Territory being backed by Australian Renewable Energy (ARENA) to the tune of $2.4 million.

Washington explained that tapping into the battery of an EV would subsidise but not cover the cost of parking.

“If I go to my local Wilson car park I can feed electricity back into the car park that is worth the amount the property owner pays for electricity.

“Let’s say it’s 20 cents per kiloWatt hour and you’ve got an EV capable of bidirectional charging with a 60kWh battery. You could probably drain 50kWh worth of that and it would give you $10.

“It won’t pay your whole parking but it will contribute $10.

“You then take that vehicle home and you charge it using off-peak electricity, which may only cost you 10 cents per kWh.

“You park there every day for work, then that’s an ability to save $5 per day or $25 per week without you really doing anything.”

Suppliers such as Jet Charge and Chargefox get involved in this process by setting up the charging networks and then managing the flow of electrons appropriately.

“Chargefox is the charging network and consumer-facing side and Jet Charge is the project delivery and electron cop side of things,” Washington explained.

Once there are a lot of EVs on the road – and in car parks – Washington said the flow of electrons could become more complex.

“If you have 100 EVs parked at a car park … they might be capable of providing back-up generation for the grid and if something happened they would pump electricity full-bore back into the grid.

“In that particular situation they get paid for that service.

“Then they are not only being paid 20c/kWh by the car park, they are also getting paid from the grid.

“That example is very basic, but there are all these additional value stacks on top of that and each one gets harder than the last to access and control.”

Washington downplayed the opportunity to use electrons as currency more widely than paying for parking. Like, perhaps, plugging in at Maccas and deducting that from the cost of your hamburger.

“I would question why we would need to go to that extent,” he said. “We have normal currency which is pretty well established, so why introduce something else?

“I don’t think there is going to be a bitcoin equivalent of electrons. I don’t think that world exists.”

Nissan LEAF to power Aussie homes