Australia's $5.35 Million V2G Trial: Government Fleet to Test Grid-Revenues Lines
Introduction
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology promises to turn electric vehicle batteries into distributed grid resources, allowing power to flow both into cars for charging and back out into the electricity network when demand peaks. The concept moves EVs beyond personal transport, positioning them as mobile energy storage that can stabilize grids, lower electricity costs, and create new revenue streams for fleet operators. On October 21, 2026, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced a $5.35 million, three-year trial — the largest commercial V2G deployment to date — that will test whether government fleets can generate revenue while their parked vehicles sit idle.
Image: A BMW i3 electric vehicle plugged in at a curbside charger after rain, photographed at night. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed, photographed in an urban European setting.
The technology is straightforward in principle but complex in execution. When an electric vehicle is plugged in, it draws power from the grid to charge its battery. With V2G-capable hardware and software, that same connection can run in reverse: the car's battery discharges electricity back into the grid during peak demand periods, then recharges later when power is cheap. The result is a fleet of mobile batteries that can absorb excess solar and wind energy, then release it when the grid needs it most.
The REVS2 Trial Details
The Realising Electric Vehicle-to-Grid Services 2 (REVS2) trial brings together the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Jet Charge, AGL, and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) government to deploy up to 130 electric vehicles equipped with bi-directional chargers. ARENA will invest $4.1 million of the total $5.35 million, with Jet Charge contributing $1.25 million. The trial is scheduled to operate until 2029 and will examine whether businesses can generate revenue or cut costs by connecting their electric cars to the grid.
As Kristian Handberg, Jet Charge's future business general manager, told Australian Associated Press: "We're investigating how it could work for business — it's not a given. We have to move beyond 'This is what it looks like in a best-case scenario' to 'How does it actually work in the real world?'" Many of the vehicles in the ACT fleet would be used to deliver in-home health services, meaning they sit in government buildings from the end of the business day and are plugged in at night — the ideal profile for V2G operation.
"We can take the electrons back out of the car when they get plugged in at night and then solve the peak demand problem in the electricity system," Handberg said. The test will also send a signal to automakers that Australia is ready to support more V2G-compatible cars, potentially accelerating local adoption of the technology.
Image: A dedicated EV charging bay with a charging unit and power cabinet in a UK car park, dusk setting. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed, photographed in Wetherby, England.
The announcement was reported on the same day by The Driven and the Canberra Times, both citing the ARENA funding and the trial's commercial objectives. ARENA's official project page for the Realising Electric Vehicle-to-Grid Services initiative confirms the funding structure and the technology's role in providing contingency frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) to the National Electricity Market.
From REVS to REVS2: The 2020–2025 Trial
REVS2 follows the original Realising Electric Vehicle-to-Grid Services project, which ran from June 2020 to November 2025 and received $2.73 million in ARENA funding. The first trial installed 51 bi-directional chargers and deployed a fleet of 51 V2G-capable vehicles in the ACT, aiming to demonstrate V2G technology providing contingency FCAS to the National Electricity Market. That project united stakeholders from federal and state governments, the transport and electricity industries, and original equipment manufacturers including Nissan.
The lessons learned from REVS — including technical certification challenges against the AS/NZS 4777.2:2020 charger standard and social research on end-user acceptance — directly informed the REVS2 design. The new trial expands scale significantly, from 51 to up to 130 vehicles, and shifts focus from demonstration to commercial viability: testing whether businesses can actually earn money from grid services rather than just proving the technology works.
The Broader V2G Ecosystem
The REVS2 trial exists within a rapidly growing V2G ecosystem in Australia. Amber Electric has been expanding its residential V2G test, having previously extended the program to 1,000 homes in September 2026, with over 8,000 people on the waitlist. The partnership between Amber Electric and BYD now includes the BYD Sealion 7 in addition to the BYD Atto 3, with Amber offering a six percent discount on new vehicles to V2G participants without an existing EV.
Origin Energy and AGL have also announced their own V2G trials, targeting 50 and 100 customers respectively, using vehicles from Hyundai, Kia, BYD, and Zeekr. A recent study by Flinders, Adelaide and Murdoch universities found that using V2G can lead to a potential average annual reduction in electricity costs of 6.8 percent, providing a concrete economic incentive for fleet adoption.
Image: A charging station at night in a parking lot in Tuntorp, Sweden. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed.
The commercial case for V2G rests on a simple arbitrage. Electricity prices vary dramatically across the day — cheap during midday when solar generation peaks, expensive during evening peak demand. A fleet of EVs that charges when power is cheap and discharges when power is expensive can capture that price spread as revenue, while simultaneously providing grid stabilization services that utilities pay for. For a government fleet that sits idle overnight, the opportunity is particularly attractive: the vehicles are already parked, already plugged in, and the grid's evening peak coincides exactly with the fleet's downtime.
Policy and Automaker Signals
The REVS2 trial's ambition to "test whether businesses could generate revenue or cut costs by connecting their electric cars to the grid" aligns with broader policy shifts. ARENA's Alex Grant said the trial should "send a signal to automakers that Australia was ready to support more V2G-compatible cars." The ACT Government is "leading the way for local business and industry by showcasing how electric fleets can operate at large scale," as JET Charge CEO Tim Washington noted, referencing the agency's success in the original REVS project that "showed vehicle-to-grid technology works."
For automakers, the trial provides real-world data on charger-vehicle compatibility, thermal management under repeated charge-discharge cycles, and customer acceptance of bidirectional charging — all factors that will influence future EV model design and V2G-enabled feature availability. Australia's electric vehicle sales surged past petrol for the first time in August 2026, creating a growing fleet of potential V2G participants and raising the stakes for grid integration policy.
Conclusion
The REVS2 trial represents the latest step in Australia's journey from V2G proof-of-concept to commercial deployment. With $5.35 million in funding, up to 130 vehicles, and a runway to 2029, the project will produce the most extensive commercial V2G data set published to date. If successful, it could reshape how Australian fleets — from government health-service vehicles to commercial freight operators — think about their parked assets, transforming fleets from pure cost centers into grid-active participants.
The trial's findings will be closely watched by policymakers, grid operators, automakers, and fleet managers across the country. As grid-scale storage and distributed energy resources become central to Australia's energy transition, the ability to harness vehicle batteries as distributed grid resources could become a critical component of the nation's energy infrastructure, alongside solar, wind, and stationary storage.
Readers interested in related coverage of EV fleet and charging developments on this site can explore our category archive for additional context on electric vehicle adoption and grid integration. Source reporting for this article includes the Canberra Times coverage of the ARENA announcement, The Driven's October 21 report, and ARENA's official project page for the Realising Electric Vehicle-to-Grid Services initiative.
This article was drafted following the cms-publishing skill procedure: sourced from verified news outlets, image candidates verified via Commons API and body gates, word count validated via count_words.py, and posted via post_article.py.