Beyond the bowser: why grid orchestration and smart tariffs are the real EV revolution

Kaluza Director of Product (C&I) Jesse Warburg spoke to pv magazine about how electric vehicle (EV) sales spikes may indicate panic buying in the wake of rising oil prices, but it can increasingly unlock flexibility to serve the next wave of electrified demand.

What are the indicators that panic-driven purchases of EVs rather than considered long-term decisions are taking place?

I’d be careful about reading motive off a sales figure — I can’t see inside anyone’s purchase decision. What I can see is timing. Sales went from roughly 34,000 to 69,000 quarter-on-quarter, and that step change lines up almost exactly with two events: fuel prices moving on the back of the geopolitical situation, and the excise discount ending. A first EV purchase usually runs a six-to-twelve-month research cycle, so a doubling inside a single quarter is a response to something happening now rather than a plan maturing. Whether you call that panic or good timing probably depends on the buyer.

Are new owners aware of how to get the most value out of an EV, and if not, why? What conversations are you having/hearing?

Mostly not, and I don’t think that’s the buyers’ fault. The conversation they’ve been handed stops at “no more petrol bills,” which is true and only the start. What I hear from retailers and networks fielding first-time-owner calls is that the questions about charging cost arrive after the car is in the driveway rather than before. That’s a reasonable place to end up when the thing you were solving for was the price at the bowser.

The other piece almost nobody factors in going in is maintenance. An EV has a fraction of the moving parts of an internal combustion engine — no oil changes, no exhaust system, far less wear on brakes thanks to regenerative braking. That’s real money back in someone’s pocket every single year, on top of whatever they save on fuel, and its barely part of the conversation people are having when they buy. So new owners are actually walking away with more value than they realise.

Can you define the “value” you consider these new EV owners are missing out on?

In pricing terms an EV is a large, movable block of demand — 40 or 50 kWh that has to land somewhere inside a 24-hour window, and the owner mostly doesn’t care when, as long as the car is charged by morning.

That flexibility has a value, and the value is the spread between the cheapest hours and the most expensive ones. On a flat tariff the spread is invisible to you, so you capture none of it and you’ve moved your fuel spend from the bowser to the grid at roughly the same number.

On a time-of-use or EV tariff, shifting the same charge into an off-peak or solar-heavy window is where the saving actually lives. Bidirectional charging — selling energy back — is starting to appear here, though I’d treat it as an emerging option rather than something most owners can act on today.

What are the impacts of a sudden influx of new charging behaviour landing on a grid that’s already managing its own volatility? Is the grid ready?

We have more rooftop solar per person than anywhere in the world, and the wholesale market already shows it — spot prices in South Australia were negative in 48% of dispatch intervals in the fourth quarter of last year, a record.

So, the constraint being managed is timing rather than volume, and uncoordinated EV charging lands in the worst available spot on that curve: plug in at 6 pm, when the solar has gone, and everyone else is home too.

Whether the grid is “ready” is hard to answer as a yes or a no. The networks I talk to are far less worried about total energy than about specific streets — a distribution transformer in a suburb that suddenly has six new EVs on it.

We had a version of this argument about rooftop solar a decade ago, and what moved it was tariff design and inverter standards rather than new poles and wires.

Why is orchestration (not just adoption) the real story here?

Because the sales number on its own doesn’t tell you which way this goes. The same car, on the same street, either adds to the evening peak or soaks up the middle of the day, and the difference is entirely in when it charges — which is a tariff and software question rather than a hardware one.

What advice would you give EV owners on how to actually save money vs just shifting their spend from petrol to the 5 pm charging peak?

Two things. First, get onto an EV-specific or time-of-use tariff — charging on a flat rate is the single easiest way to lose the savings you bought the car for. Second, don’t rely on manually remembering to charge at the right time; use smart or managed charging that does it automatically. The whole point is that you shouldn’t have to think about it. If you’re doing mental math every evening about when to plug in, the system’s failed you, not the other way around.

I’ll answer this as what I’d look at rather than what anyone should do, because I build pricing software and don’t sell electricity. Two things. The first is the tariff — charge a car on a flat rate, and you’ve bought the asset while leaving the mechanism that pays for it switched off, so it’s worth asking your retailer what EV or time-of-use options they have and when the off-peak window actually falls. The second is automation. Anything that depends on you remembering to plug in at 11 pm will hold for about three weeks. Managed charging, a smart charger, or just the timer in the car does the same job without requiring the discipline. And if someone finds themselves doing arithmetic in the driveway every evening, I’d call that a product problem rather than a personal failing.

What does industry need to do to prepare for this influx, communicate the benefits, and ensure access to all consumers, including renters and people living in apartments?

I’m a software supplier, so I’d rather describe what seems to be working than hand out instructions to people running networks and retail books. Three observations. Retailers who already have EV or time-of-use tariffs in the market are the ones with any ability to shape charging behaviour at all — you can’t send a price signal you haven’t built, and that tariff design work takes longer than most people expect. 

On the regulatory side, the AEMC’s Flexible Trading Arrangements matter more than the name suggests: they’re what makes it commercially viable for someone to aggregate and dispatch a large number of small flexible assets, which is the business model most of this depends on. 

And on access, I’d be cautious about claiming authority — our work sits with retailers rather than with consumers — but the obvious asymmetry is that everything I’ve just described assumes a driveway. Kerbside and workplace charging is the equivalent option for renters and apartment dwellers, and it’s a long way behind.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Only that the shape of this repeats. Heat pumps, home batteries, and eventually most of household heat and hot water are the same problem in a different wrapper — a large new block of electrical demand arriving faster than the tariffs and the software that would coordinate it. We’ll run this exercise several more times (we already have run similar ones with Solar PV and home batteries recently), and the EV round is where I hope the industry builds the necessary machinery.