V2L Shares Its Power in Cyclone Alfred

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Last Updated on: 15th March 2025, 04:16 am

When I hear the name Alfred, I think of the kindly butler making hot cocoa for a young Master Bruce in Wayne Manor. Cyclone Alfred was another matter, hitting Brisbane over three days and causing major damage through a large portion of the southern Queensland and northern New South Wales coast in Eastern Australia. In the midst of this mayhem, electric car owners with vehicle-to-load (V2L) capability made use of their available battery power when the grid went down. Here are a few of their stories, gleaned from a shoutout to Facebook and some from friends.

Greg tells me: This weekend has been an interesting time. For the first time since I bought the BYD Atto 3, the house had no power for 11 hours. At 6am, I woke to go to the toilet, lights not working. Hmm, power out. I went out to the BYD plugged in the two-power point, powerboats. I went and got the extension lead and plugged in the fridge. Lights on, fridge working. I felt like a coffee. Fill the jug with water. Get another extension lead plug in the jug. I turned off the fridge, just in case the jug used too much power. Turned the jug on, yes, the jug is working. Put the hot water into the thermos and filled up my cup of coffee. Turned the fridge back on. Later in the day, I connected the TV as well. Yes, that is working. Gee this BYD power is handy. I used 2% of the battery in 11 hours. I was using 0.06 of 1 watt, I think. Not sure on that. I don’t believe BYD advertise this addition enough.

Many people shared Alan’s experience — “I was all set up but didn’t need it.” Sue adds:

Our Atto is 2 years old now and I’m still excited every time I drive it. We have never recharged at a charging station and always charged at home during daylight hours using the power our solar panels provide. Last week with the threat of a severe cyclone coming and basically all predictions had it crossing very near to where we live in Narangba, we planned ahead and kept the Atto charged up to nearly 100%.

On Saturday evening we were hit with high wind gusts and rain and lost power at 9.20pm. Never having use the vehicle to load cable provided with the Atto we were unsure just what it was capable of and what a surprise that turned out to be. Connecting was easy and initially we ran a power lead only to our main fridge in the house. The next morning, we became adventurous and added the kettle, toaster, induction hotplate and of course the coffee machine. We didn’t run all these appliances at the same time, I was careful as I didn’t want to put too much demand on all at once. We later added an extra power lead and hooked up the power board attached to our entertainment centre. Not having any network available on our phones and tablets we needed to know what was going on and TV was going to be our only connection with the outside world.

So, in total we lost power for 36 hours and during that time we used 8% of the Atto’s battery power. Most appliances listed were used at least twice and the fridge stayed on power the whole time. I think that is very impressive and I have not hesitated to tell our neighbours and friends who have inquired about our survival during this recent weather event. Given our unpredictable weather I see this feature that EV’s offer with the vehicle to load being a very good selling point.

Even those with PHEV vehicles with low battery capacity like the Mitsubishi Outlander were able to have backup power. Peter tells me that he powered the fridge, modem, router and wireless AP from his Mitsubishi Outlander during the 2.5 days he lost power.

Here’s another: I set my house up to use the 3200 watts available from my car using a 15 amp power lead and 25 amp power block. Ran the fridge, freezer, TV, espresso maker, toaster and kettle. The last three only one at a time. Over four days the car battery went from 100% to 61%.

For some, life continued as normal. Thanks, Gabriella — We ran the whole house as we would normally do, with 2 EVs. Life was pretty normal. We ran the dishwasher, 2 big fridges, microwave, coffee machine, lights, computers, TVs, washing machine, starlink. Couldn’t fault it. Did it first during Christmas when the “tornado” hit the Gold Coast and we were without electricity for 5 days so it was our second big outage backed up by the EVs.

And it’s not just BYD vehicles. Here’s a story from an MG4 owner:

Power just came back on for us in the Redlands area, post Cyclone Alfred. We relied on our MG4 51 Excite for power over the last 36 hours. We ran a beast of a fridge, devices, kettle, and my coffee machine (vital) with our consumption we lost about 10% a day, and probably could have lasted a full week. Really thankful for this technology, so much better than a generator.

Brian’s comments were backed up by other MG owners. Some EV owners even mentioned that they would be trading in their EV which did not support V2L for one that did. Look out, Tesla!

Speaking of generators, when the mainstream media reported on this and praised the V2L capability for riding out natural disasters like Cyclone Alfred, many negative comments were made about how much cheaper it would be to have a diesel generator. Yes, it would, but if you already have the car, why go buy a generator? One pertinent point was the need to disconnect the car if you had to go somewhere. But in my opinion, you should see a psychiatrist if you wanted to go out in Cyclone Alfred.

As we sat in our house, sheltering half our family (my daughter and my grandchildren were with us) from the 100-mile-an-hour gusts, the last thing we wanted to do was go anywhere! Schools and shops and workplaces were closed. Even now, a week later, the parks are full of debris from huge whole gum trees to massive branches.

Many of the hundreds of comments responding to the positive Telegraph story were negative. It was good to see that there were just as many rebuttals and positive comments. My favourite rebuttal was:

I loved reading the comments from the EV haters replying to the fact that a bog standard EV was able to supply EV owners with their residential electricity needs during a crisis which is something that ICE drivers were unable to do. The old Landcruiser owning beard strokers typing furiously into their lithium powered smartphone ‘batteries are no good mate, not bloody reliable enough in a crisis’ …. Oh wait!

Last one: Our EV has got us through 6 days without power (and counting). It’s brilliant. Plus no need for fuel, no smell or noise. Generators are also really valuable for people in times like these. The people bagging out EVs either don’t understand how good they are or probably just never want to admit it.

Those making comments about being unable to charge your car, but that you can still drive a petrol car, don’t seem to realise that you can drive your EV to where the power is working, and the fact that petrol pumps are run on electricity. For those who want the entertaining aggravation of ignorance rampant, read the comments here.

Hopefully the average Australian will eventually look out the window during the next cyclone and see that those with V2L still have their lights on and their light bulb will also come on. “Would you like to come over and charge your phone? You could watch some EV TV with us if you like.” The neanderthals gather around the fire amazed at this new technology.