France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes

[harm_less]

It's not only renewable energy that is driven by the sun. Fossil fuels are formed from plants that used the sun to grow millions of years ago.

We're charging two EVs and battery garden tools from our 8.2kW of solar plus pumped water supply and usual home demands. We are currently seeing a credit on our Octopus account of $40 which will see us going back into debit by about Apr/May. To put the EV consumption into perspective our Polestar2 uses ~2,200kWh/year and the Leaf more like 1,300kWh. Our annual generation is around 12,000kWh/year and we export ~4,500kWh of that.

When we did our last upgrade we ended up with a redundant 5kW inverter which we're currently considering reinstalling with appropiate extra panels on our house roof as part of major renovations we're about to start. The plan is to export 100% of this extra generation which should return us about $1,300/year at Octopus's FIT. That would see us in constant and increasing credit all year so now in the process of approaching Octopus about how we could go about 'withdrawing' this credit from time to time. Planning stages at present but I'm confident of <5year ROI on the extra costs of getting this up and running. Adding battery or going V2G with our Leaf is another possibility I'm considering.

Yes thats a good point, especially given that fossil fuels are not considered a renewable fuel, its really just on the scale of a human lifetime that they are not when they take at least tens of thousands of years to millions of years to form.
V2G is a great option for a home battery, providing the car is available when you need to use that energy. I see that the returns from energy retailers varies dramatically, many dont want to credit you back in cash either, hopefully you can strike a good deal with Octopus.
I take it that you must have a high voltage DC inverter if you are considering V2G. Higher voltages also allow more efficiency and thinner cables, etc, plus there are a ton of cheap surplus EV batteries available from wrecked cars now that make a great second use as a solar bank.

V2G is on its way as latest version of the AU/NZ electrical standard 4777 is being rolled out now in Aussie and here this year which includes V2G functionality. The energy stored in an EV battery is typically ~400V DC so that needs to be converted to grid voltage to be used domestically. V2L, and some V2H, enabled EVs do this through their onboard inverter while others allow DC output that is then converted by a bidirectional EVSE 'charger'. The manufacturers of EVSEs are currently hurriedly developing suitable bidirectional chargers as a result of the demand coming as the V2G standards are adopted.

The amount of energy required to power a home is small compared to most EV battery capacities so easy to 'pinch' a bit of it without hindering EV mobility. Even better if the EV in question is a second vehicle.

Newer electricity suppliers such as Octopus and Ecotricity are paying good tariffs for exported generation as a way of building a stable of customers with solar capacity as their own distributed 'power station' which insulates them to some degree from the volatility of NZ's wholesale electricity prices. For us the FIT is 1.5c short of our night supply rate with Octopus but in some regions the inverse applies which make for a great incentive to ramp up solar capacity.