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A Sydney university team has developed Australia's first hybrid-electric car that can both be charged from a household plug and help supply electricity to the grid.
The SWITCH — developed by the Institute of Sustainable Futures at University of Technology Sydney — can charge its batteries from a household supply using cheap off-peak electricity and feed any spare power it stores back into the grid at peak demand times.
"This is very, very exciting," project director Chris Dunstan, of UTS, says. "There are only a handful of V2G (vehicle to grid) examples around the world but the potential is enormous.
"Being able to go out and buy one of these vehicles is not going to happen next month ... it's not going to happen next year ... but when there are thousands of these out there the effect on renewable energy will be huge."
Dunstan says the SWITCH prototype, the next step in the electric vehicle revolution, was adapted by the UTS research team from a standard Toyota Prius by adding extra batteries, controls and connections.
While the prototype does not have the capacity to recharge its extra batteries with recovered energy — as the factory-fitted Prius system does — it is something they are working towards.
"At the moment it is purely a storage system for extra electric charge which can extend the pure electric range of the Prius, but we are certainly interested in being able to gather charge from the car," Dunstan says.
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