Latest / Best of Business / James Ryan: Genesis general retail manager reveals how much powering your home with an EV could save

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James Ryan: Genesis general retail manager reveals how much powering your home with an EV could save · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Now, Genesis Energy has done one of the first vehicle-to-grid
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  Speaker 2: trials and found homes can save a huge amount of
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  Speaker 2: money on power if they use the EV to power
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  Speaker 2: the house during peak hours. James Ryan with Genesis is
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  Speaker 2: with us now. Hi, James.
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  Speaker 3: Good afternoon, Heather.
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  Speaker 2: How much can they save?
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  Speaker 3: Well, we're trying to work that out. Some estimates have shown...
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  Speaker 3: that it could be up to $ 2, 000 a year, but
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  Speaker 3: we're trying to, that's an estimate based hypothetically, we're trying
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  Speaker 3: to look in practice what could actually be achieved. And
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  Speaker 3: the number, it's hard to work out based on our trial,
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  Speaker 3: but at the moment we're trying to work out if
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  Speaker 3: the technology works, and then from there we can work
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  Speaker 3: out the potential savings.
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  Speaker 2: During the trial, there was one three-hour event where the
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  Speaker 2: home was using 16 kilowatt hours of electricity, but just
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  Speaker 2: one kilowatt hour came from the grid, right? The rest
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  Speaker 2: came from the car.
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  Speaker 3: That's right. The technology is working very well in our house. And, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: we can run the house from the car very easily.
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  Speaker 3: And if there's a bit extra, it actually gets fed
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  Speaker 3: back into the grid. So we've shown that that works
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  Speaker 3: quite well.
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  Speaker 2: OK, what do you need? Like if you have an
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  Speaker 2: electric vehicle, can any one of us do this?
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  Speaker 3: It's a bit complicated at the moment. So you need
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  Speaker 3: a special charger called a bidirectional charger. And there's two
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  Speaker 3: models available at the moment in New Zealand. And you
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  Speaker 3: also need to get sort of special your car to
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  Speaker 3: be configured to be able to feed out into the grid.
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  Speaker 3: Lots of cars are able to do that, but it
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  Speaker 3: hasn't been turned on by the manufacturer because you have
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  Speaker 3: to get a special dispensation for the battery warranty. So
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  Speaker 3: all of it's a bit experimental at this stage. Okay.
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  Speaker 2: And then do you have any concerns about, you know,
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  Speaker 2: here you are running your car dry to power the
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  Speaker 2: washing machine or the dryer or whatever, and maybe you
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  Speaker 2: have to go down the road to get some milk
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  Speaker 2: and now you've got no juice in your car?
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  Speaker 3: Well, those are exactly the situations that we're trying to
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  Speaker 3: experiment with. There was one occasion where I forgot to
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  Speaker 3: change the car from discharging to charging. And in the morning,
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  Speaker 3: I only had 20% of charge, which is a bit inconvenient.
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  Speaker 3: So at the moment, we haven't quite got the automation
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  Speaker 3: right in the technology. So you do have to pay attention.
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  Speaker 3: It's a bit fiddly. But we're trying to work out
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  Speaker 3: a way of making sure that you can benefit from it.
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  Speaker 3: But we sort of mitigate the risks of getting it wrong.
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  Speaker 2: And so, James, is the future basically that this is
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  Speaker 2: just how we run it? Like, can you imagine in
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand where we're all running our houses off the BYDs?
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  Speaker 3: I think it can happen. The car manufacturers are making
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  Speaker 3: this more standard. And when they become more standard, then
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  Speaker 3: the charges will become more common. And what we're doing
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  Speaker 3: is to try to understand how this technology works in practice.
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  Speaker 3: So as an energy company, we can provide products to
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  Speaker 3: customers so they can make the most out of it.
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  Speaker 3: And it's really important to understand the practicalities of, you know,
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  Speaker 3: how often do people need their cars in the evening
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  Speaker 3: so it's not plugged in and stuff like that. How
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  Speaker 3: do we fit it around people's lives is what we're
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  Speaker 3: trying to work out.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks, James. Really appreciate you talking us through that. James Ryan, Genesis,
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  Speaker 2: General Manager of Retail.
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