Australia Just Put $13.6 Million into V2G.
What Is New Zealand Waiting For?
While New Zealand debates LNG imports, diesel backup generation and billion-dollar dry-year solutions, Australia has quietly taken another step toward a fundamentally different electricity system.
Amber Electric has announced a $13.6 million expansion of its Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) programme, backed by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), increasing the rollout from an initial 50-home trial to 1,000 homes. This is now the largest residential V2G deployment in Australia.
The significance is not the funding itself. The significance is that Australia is no longer asking: Does V2G work? Australia is now asking: How quickly can we scale it?
The Trial Has Already Proven the Economics
According to Amber:
- One Victorian household eliminated its EV energy costs and generated an additional A$1,200 of savings over a year.
- A South Australian customer earned A$500 during a single heatwave afternoon by supporting the grid during a period of high wholesale prices.
These are not engineering models or consultant forecasts. These are real households receiving real payments.
Australia Has Recognised EVs Are Not Cars
They are batteries on wheels. A modern EV typically carries 60 kWh of storage ($30,000). That is equivalent to 4 Tesla Powerwalls ($60,000) and several days of average household electricity consumption. Historically vehicles have sat idle 95% of the time. V2G turns them into active grid assets. They can:
- Charge when renewable energy is abundant.
- Support homes during peak demand.
- Export electricity back to the grid.
- Reduce network congestion.
- Help preserve hydro and other strategic reserves.
Australia Is Simultaneously Teaching a Second Lesson
Australia is not only scaling V2G. It is also demonstrating how expensive the traditional centralised approach can become. As of 2026 Australia has around:
- 5.7 GW of utility-scale battery capacity operating.
- More than 12 GWh of battery energy storage installed.
- Several additional gigawatts under construction.
At the same time, major transmission projects have experienced substantial cost escalation:
- VNI West has grown from approximately A$3.6 billion to A$7.6 billion.
- Project EnergyConnect has increased from roughly A$2.1 billion to over A$3.5 billion.
- Marinus Link has experienced significant cost escalation.
- Snowy 2.0 has become one of Australia’s most expensive infrastructure projects, rising from an initial estimate of around A$2 billion to nearly A$12 billion and still facing delays and additional cost pressure.
These projects may still be justified. However they demonstrate an important reality. Consumers ultimately pay for all of them. Whether through electricity prices, network charges, taxes or regulated asset bases, the cost eventually flows back to households and businesses.
New Zealand Has an Opportunity to Leapfrog
Australia has largely followed the traditional pathway. Generation → Transmission → Utility Batteries → Consumers
New Zealand has an opportunity to add another layer. Generation → EV Batteries → Homes → Businesses → Distribution Networks → Consumers
The difference is a utility battery is purchased solely for the electricity system. An EV battery is purchased primarily for transport and can provide electricity services as a secondary benefit. The transport owner pays for most of the battery. The electricity system only pays for the services it receives.
The Missing Question in New Zealand
Current discussions frequently focus on:
- LNG imports.
- Diesel backup generation.
- Dry-year reserves.
- Utility-scale batteries.
- New transmission infrastructure.
These are all supply-side solutions. Yet millions of kilowatt-hours of storage may already be arriving in driveways.
The question should not be: “How much backup generation do we need?”
The question should be: “How much flexibility already exists at the edge of the network?”
A Different Dry-Year Strategy
Imagine a future with:
- Widespread rooftop and commercial solar.
- Hundreds of thousands of V2G-capable EVs.
- Smart hot water systems.
- Community batteries.
- Flexible industrial demand.
- Hydro managed as a strategic seasonal reserve.
In that system:
- EVs absorb excess renewable generation.
- Evening peaks are supplied from distributed batteries.
- Hydro is conserved.
- Network congestion is reduced.
- Dry-year resilience improves.
Every kilowatt-hour supplied from a parked EV is a kilowatt-hour that does not need to come from diesel, coal, imported LNG, or another billion-dollar infrastructure project.
The Economic Difference
Traditional infrastructure model, consumers pay for:
- generation assets,
- transmission assets,
- utility batteries,
- financing costs,
- regulated returns,
- cost overruns.
Distributed V2G model, consumers buy EVs primarily for transport. The electricity system then pays owners only for the grid services delivered. This is fundamentally different economics. Instead of building batteries for the grid, the grid gains access to batteries that already exist.
The Real Opportunity
Australia’s battery and transmission investments will provide valuable lessons. New Zealand should learn from both the successes and the cost overruns. Rather than copying every step of Australia’s journey, New Zealand has an opportunity to leapfrog directly toward a more distributed model built around V2G, distributed storage, local flexibility, transparent price signals, hydro conservation and renewable overbuild.
The future electricity system will not be built solely from more generation, more poles and wires, and more backup fuel. It will increasingly be built from millions of distributed assets responding to market signals. Australia appears to understand this. The Amber V2G programme shows that the future has already started.
The question for New Zealand is whether we intend to lead, follow, or continue planning around twentieth-century solutions while twenty-first-century alternatives are already being deployed at scale.
Update June 2026 – NZ government needs a reset
The significance of recent announcements from GM Energy and Toyota cannot be overstated. EVs are not just transport, they are energy infrastructure.
GM Energy is building an ecosystem where EVs, bidirectional chargers, home batteries and virtual power plants operate as a single platform. Toyota’s electric Hilux extends that opportunity into one of Australasia’s most important vehicle segments. Fleet utes, council vehicles, contractors, orchards and farms spend most of their lives parked, making them ideal distributed energy resources.
Governments and utilities are increasingly recognising that privately funded EV batteries can provide services traditionally delivered by expensive network upgrades, peaking generation and utility-scale storage. Every EV can potentially deliver transport, backup power, solar self-consumption, peak demand reduction and grid support from the same asset.
Australia appears to have concluded that accelerating this transition is economically attractive. Programs supported by ARENA, retailers such as Amber and manufacturers including BYD, Toyota and GM are treating EVs as part of the energy system rather than simply vehicles. The objective is not to subsidise cars, but to unlock a growing fleet of privately funded batteries that can reduce electricity costs, improve resilience and defer infrastructure investment.
For New Zealand, facing dry-year risk, declining gas supplies, rising transmission and distribution costs, and ongoing dependence on imported transport fuels, the implications are significant. The question is no longer whether EVs can support the grid. The question is whether policy and market structures will evolve quickly enough to capture the economic value they can provide.
References
May 2026 Amber announces extension to V2G trial https://www.amber.com.au/blog/amber-scales-vehicle-to-grid-to-1-000-homes-with-13-6m-funding
Bi-directional Charger used in ARENA Trial https://www.starcharge.com/sxcdz7/detail
“GM Energy” podcast, a new V2G energy model https://www.volts.wtf/p/americas-flagship-automaker-enters
Toyota finally selling a Hilux BEV in NZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUHBIXdMJsk&t=11s
NZ still consulting on fossil fuel solutions https://solarenergy.kiwi/dry-year-submission/
Rewiring NZ endorses diesel as a solution https://solarenergy.kiwi/lng-diesel/