Hyundai has completed Australia’s first Vehicle-to-Grid discharge running the real bidirectional standard, not a workaround bolted onto an older one.
An IONIQ 9 sent power back through a StarCharge Halo charger this month using ISO 15118-20, the protocol actually built for two-way energy flow. Hyundai Motor Company Australia (HMCA) is calling it the country’s first V2G discharge under that standard.
What ISO 15118-20 changes
ISO 15118-20 is the second-generation version of the international communication standard between an EV and its charger. The earlier ISO 15118-2 handles AC charging and Plug and Charge authentication, but it was never designed for power to flow the other way. ISO 15118-20 adds the message sets and sequencing that bidirectional transfer actually needs along with tighter security (mandatory TLS 1.3 rather than the optional, looser approach under -2).
Why this is different from the existing trials
Australia already has V2G trials running. Amber Electric’s ARENA-backed program has scaled from 50 to 1,000 households with BYD providing battery warranty cover for participants. AGL is running its own trial across Hyundai, Kia, BYD and Zeekr vehicles. Origin Energy has a subscription offer pairing a BYD Atto 3 with a StarCharge Halo charger.
None of those are using ISO 15118-20 to do the actual discharging. Industry reporting earlier this year flagged that most bidirectional charging hardware in the field still relies on variations of the older ISO 15118-1 or -2 protocols, effectively coaxing a car into discharging while it thinks it’s charging. It works, but it’s a workaround. Hyundai’s discharge is the first local instance where the vehicle and charger are speaking the protocol that was purpose-built for V2G from the ground up.
BYD’s approach to date has been to secure warranty backing across multiple retailer trials, which solves a different part of the adoption problem. Hyundai trial is narrower and more technical: proving the protocol layer itself works before scaling anything commercial on top of it.
The IONIQ 9 and the Halo charger
The IONIQ 9 is Hyundai’s flagship and its most expensive model sold here, priced from $119,750 before on-roads in the sole Calligraphy AWD trim. It rides on the E-GMP platform with 800-volt architecture, a 110.3kWh battery and a claimed 600km WLTP range. That same 800V system that delivers 233kW DC fast charging also underpins the bidirectional flow Hyundai used for this discharge.
The IONIQ 9 doesn’t get a household power outlet in the cabin like some rivals. The discharge runs through the CCS DC charging port via the external StarCharge Halo unit, which is the correct path for genuine V2G rather than the camping-plug version of bidirectional power.
The Halo itself is a 7.4kW single-phase bidirectional DC wallbox, priced around $5,990 including GST. It picked up Clean Energy Council listing in March 2026, the third charger to do so in Australia after the Sigenergy SigenStor and V2Grid’s NUMBAT, and it’s AS/NZS 4777.2 compliant for grid connection.
Where this sits in the bigger picture
Australia adopted national V2G and V2H standards in 2024 and ARENA reckons up to 2.6 million homes could be running V2G by 2040. The Vehicle-Grid Network, a coordination body backed by ARENA and Climate-KIC Australia, launched late last year specifically to sort out the alignment problem between regulators, retailers and manufacturers. Automaker confidence keeps coming up as the sticking point. Hyundai’s discharge is a direct answer to that, proof the protocol layer can be done properly rather than patched.
Don Romano, HMCA’s chief executive, framed it as the result of sustained R&D work between Korea and Australia and said V2G only scales here if consumers, energy providers and governments can trust the technology. Austin Luo from StarCharge Energy Oceania called it a strong demonstration of Hyundai’s leadership in bringing ISO 15118-20-enabled vehicle technology to Australia through the IONIQ 9.
What’s next
Hyundai has the IONIQ 5, IONIQ 6 and future IONIQ platforms under evaluation for V2G locally building on this IONIQ 9 milestone. Globally, Hyundai Motor Group is running a customer-facing V2G pilot on Jeju Island, commercial V2G in Europe and V2H services in the US, so this isn’t an isolated local exercise. It’s one data point in a group-wide push.
The next question is when this moves from lab-style demonstration to something a customer can actually buy and plug in. Hyundai hasn’t put a date on that yet. Given how fast the rest of the V2G market is moving in Australia, it won’t be able to sit on this one for long.
