Bidirectional charging roadmap

California has moved bidirectional charging from pilot projects toward state planning, with a March 2026 roadmap spelling out how electric vehicles could send power back to homes and the grid. (energy.ca.gov) Bidirectional charging lets a parked vehicle act like a battery on wheels: it can charge when electricity is plentiful, then discharge later to a house or the wider power system. The California Energy Commission said that could cut peak demand, improve backup power during outages and lower summer bills for drivers. (energy.ca.gov, cpuc.ca.gov) The roadmap was docketed on March 5, 2026 in the California Energy Commission’s vehicle-grid integration proceeding. It says California’s electric vehicle fleet represented about 18.5 gigawatts of potential storage capacity in 2025, more than the state’s stationary storage total cited in the roadmap. (energy.ca.gov, electronicdesign.com) California staff modeled one use case in particular: vehicle-to-home, where a car powers the house instead of exporting to the grid. That analysis found residential peak demand could fall by as much as 5 gigawatts in 2030, while summer bill savings could average $262 to $321 per driver. (energy.ca.gov) The state is not starting from zero. The California Public Utilities Commission says its vehicle-grid integration work has been running through working groups, utility pilots and annual forums, with the first forum held in March 2024 and the third in March 2026. (cpuc.ca.gov) The legal backdrop also changed in 2024. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 59 on September 27, 2024, authorizing the California Energy Commission, with other agencies, to require battery electric vehicles to be bidirectional-capable if it finds a compelling use case for drivers and the grid. (arb.ca.gov) The roadmap says the main obstacles are less about physics than plumbing: charger costs, interoperability between vehicles and chargers, utility interconnection rules and the lack of clear payment when a vehicle exports power. The California Energy Commission says it is already funding charger development, interoperability testing labs and early deployments. (energy.ca.gov) That push lines up with activity abroad. New South Wales released its 2026 Electric Vehicle Strategy on April 14, 2026 with A$100 million for fast chargers, kerbside charging, electric truck support and training for about 2,000 mechanics, with officials saying more than 3,300 chargers have already been funded across more than 1,200 sites. (nsw.gov.au) Safety remains part of the debate as charging networks expand. EV FireSafe, an Australian research group supported by the country’s Defence Science and Technology Group, says its database tracks whether incidents were connected to charging, while warning that its figures are a verified sample rather than a complete global count. (evfiresafe.com) California’s next step is less a single mandate than a long build-out of standards, rates, hardware and utility rules. The state’s case is that millions of parked cars could become part of the power system without asking drivers to buy a second battery for the garage. (energy.ca.gov, cpuc.ca.gov)