Queenslander Grant Schmidt would love to charge his BYD Sealion 7 from the solar panels sitting on his roof and then send it power back into the grid at night.

Given the ducted aircon in his Mount Cotton house can chew through 60–70 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a day, he promises there will still be plenty of business for the grid.

But he can’t, the frustrated electric vehicle (EV) owner has been thwarted by Queensland’s arcane network rules.

“The rules won’t let me install a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charger and have a rooftop solar system that can charge the car.”

What Schmidt is talking about is a 10 kilovolt-ampere (kVA) maximum limit on inverter capacity for a single phase connection. 

That means a house in Queensland is limited to either a 10 kVA hybrid solar inverter – one that can export to the grid or to a home battery – or a V2G charger with an inverter rated at up to 10 kVA, but can’t connect both.

So while Schmidt can charge his EV and home battery from his 13.2 kilowatts (kW) of rooftop solar, and export the solar directly into the grid, he cannot export any electricity separately from his car.

It’s not just Schmidt who is baffled by the esotericism of Energy Queensland’s strictures.

The Australian Electric Vehicle Association’s man in Queensland, Nathan Gore-Brown, says they’re hearing from frustrated members about the issue too.

“They’ve done everything right: solar, a battery, an EV and when they try to add a vehicle-to-grid charger, they’re told their home has hit its inverter limit,” he tells The Driven.

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