bidirectional car battery

A car battery for an EV has been designed, until recently, just to send power to the car, but the newer models are now designed not only to deliver to the car but also to the house.  The battery can also take power to the grid. A day’s average commuting uses a tiny fraction of the stored power in the battery so there is a lot to use for other purposes, and it is possible to set the level at which the supply to the house or the grid cuts out.

The grand plan is that a number of these batteries can be networked to provide an alternative power source when there is a dip in supply on the grid.  It has been shown that most car owners leave their cars parked for a considerable amount of time in the day, particularly those who are driving to and from work. Big organisations with fleets of cars are the obvious first target for networking to the grid so that power can be drawn from the car batteries when demand is high on the grid and returned to the cars when demand is low.  

All this is a couple of years away in Australia but it provides an interesting option for supporting the supply in the grid.