We all know how frustrating a power outage can be, particularly given how dependent we are now on our electronics. Today, a resident in the regional town of Tawonga South (around 1hr drive from techAU HQ in Wodonga), was faced with a scheduled power outage, courtesy of energy provider Ausnet.
While most homes in the area were plunged into darkness, Kelly Bick turned to her 4-week old Hyndai Ioniq 5 to power the home.
As one of a lucky few to have received the Ioniq 5, the timing was fortunate, providing an opportunity to leverage the vehicle’s battery, to power the home.
The Vehicle-to-load adapter connects to the vehicle’s charging port and provides a standard 240v outlet that offered some much-needed power in a time of need.
Thanks to some creative routing of a power cord, connected to a power board, Bick was able to continue working from her home office, with the laptop and monitor provided power from the car.
When Hyundai announced the VTL functionality, they demonstrated its potential in a camping situation, but today, it proved to be equally handy right at home.
The Ioniq 5 is still a relatively new vehicle in Australia and Kelly Bick and Glenn Wilson are a couple of the first lucky owners to have one in the driveway. Their dedication to buying an EV was admirable, dealing with Doncaster Hyundai, to get the car four weeks ago.
Love the car! Still can’t believe that we have the pleasure of driving it around, sometimes just for the fun of it. So many good things, 1 pedal driving, cool air flowing through the seats, heated steering wheel, the space, the quiet, blah, blah, blah, (just the usual new EV owner stuff).
Being in regional Victoria, the electric charging infrastructure is still limited, so the couple takes advantage of their 7.7kW rooftop solar system, paired with a 9.8 kWh LG battery.
At this point you may be wondering why they didn’t simply use the home battery storage to power the house, well thanks to persistent rain for the last 24 hours the house battery was flat (just 10% remaining) so that wouldn’t help.
Ausnet had advised the power would be from 9am to 4pm, so the IONIQ came to the rescue.
A tip for anyone looking to replicate this experience with your own Ioniq 5, ensure the departure level is set correctly.
The car was currently at 67% state of charge and with the departure level required, set at 80%, the car didn’t want to offer any power-up. After a quick adjustment to let the car know as low as 30% was acceptable, the required green light came to life.
Amazing the sun came to the party and by 1 pm the house battery was full. By 3 pm the power was restored, an hour earlier than expected.
Here’s the staggering part, despite having used the electricity across multiple devices for many hours, the drain on the EVs battery was just 1% from the original state of charge – down to a staggering 66%. This means work could have continued for many hours long, or supported a number of other devices, assuming you didn’t exceed the maximum power draw available.
