xcel
11-15-2006, 08:45 PM
Your car will be able to keep your home powered during a blackout. ( http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2006/11/a_plugin_prius_.html)
Greenwombat - Todd Woody - Nov. 15, 2006http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/EnergyCS_PHEV.jpg
PG&E, one of the United States' largest and greenest utilities, is working on technology that would allow plug-in hybrid cars to feed electricity to the power grid during peak demand, Green Wombat has learned. That would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by letting the utility to switch to Prius power when demand spikes rather than being forced to buy "dirty energy" from coal-fired power plants. In effect, a plug-in hybrid becomes a back-up generator. "Your car will be able to keep your home powered during a blackout," Roland Risser, PG&E's director of customer energy efficiency, told Green Wombat last night at a dinner put on by the utility, Sun Microsystems and eBay to promote their environmental programs.
Risser says PG&E (PCGPRE) is in discussions with Toyota (TM) about producing a plug-in version of its hybrid Prius like the one above photographed by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. To create a plug-in hybrid you swap out the car's battery for a rechargeable lithium ion version so the car relies less on its gas engine. Environmentalists and companies like car dealer AutoNation have been pressing automakers to make a production version of plug-in hybrids being sold by companies like EDrive and Hymotion.
The technology PG&E is developing would allow the utility to know whether you were charging your plug-in hybrid at home, work or wherever. Let's say it's a scorching summer's day in Silicon Valley and all those air conditioned tech companies are threatening to overload the power grid. At the Googleplex, Larry and Sergey's new plug-in Priuses, along with scores of other hybrids, are parked in docking bays. The cars were charged up at home overnight when electricity demand is low. Now with a brownout looming, a PG&E manager presses a button and all the cars participating in the program begin transferring electricity from their batteries into the power grid.
Obviously, it would take a lot of plug-in hybrids to have any significant impact on the power grid, not to mention global warming. But Risser says the key isn't so much scale as the concentration of cars.
California greenie cities like Davis, Santa Cruz and Santa Monica sport way more Priuses per capita than, say, Stockton, and could serve as alt energy nodes. My block in the Berkeley hills, for instance, tends to go black during fierce winter storms but there's also a Prius in every fifth garage. Interconnect the homes and cars and you can keep the lights on when that tree takes out the power line.
Risser stresses there are many details and some technological challenges to be worked out and a rollout date has not been set yet (much will depend on whether carmakers begin production of plug-in hybrids.) There's also the trade-off that if your Prius is generating electricity for the grid you'll probably be using the gas engine more and thus emitting more greenhouse gases. But the fact that a giant utility like PG&E is pursuing such a program is yet another indication of the sweeping changes headed our way.
Greenwombat - Todd Woody - Nov. 15, 2006http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/EnergyCS_PHEV.jpg
PG&E, one of the United States' largest and greenest utilities, is working on technology that would allow plug-in hybrid cars to feed electricity to the power grid during peak demand, Green Wombat has learned. That would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by letting the utility to switch to Prius power when demand spikes rather than being forced to buy "dirty energy" from coal-fired power plants. In effect, a plug-in hybrid becomes a back-up generator. "Your car will be able to keep your home powered during a blackout," Roland Risser, PG&E's director of customer energy efficiency, told Green Wombat last night at a dinner put on by the utility, Sun Microsystems and eBay to promote their environmental programs.
Risser says PG&E (PCGPRE) is in discussions with Toyota (TM) about producing a plug-in version of its hybrid Prius like the one above photographed by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. To create a plug-in hybrid you swap out the car's battery for a rechargeable lithium ion version so the car relies less on its gas engine. Environmentalists and companies like car dealer AutoNation have been pressing automakers to make a production version of plug-in hybrids being sold by companies like EDrive and Hymotion.
The technology PG&E is developing would allow the utility to know whether you were charging your plug-in hybrid at home, work or wherever. Let's say it's a scorching summer's day in Silicon Valley and all those air conditioned tech companies are threatening to overload the power grid. At the Googleplex, Larry and Sergey's new plug-in Priuses, along with scores of other hybrids, are parked in docking bays. The cars were charged up at home overnight when electricity demand is low. Now with a brownout looming, a PG&E manager presses a button and all the cars participating in the program begin transferring electricity from their batteries into the power grid.
Obviously, it would take a lot of plug-in hybrids to have any significant impact on the power grid, not to mention global warming. But Risser says the key isn't so much scale as the concentration of cars.
California greenie cities like Davis, Santa Cruz and Santa Monica sport way more Priuses per capita than, say, Stockton, and could serve as alt energy nodes. My block in the Berkeley hills, for instance, tends to go black during fierce winter storms but there's also a Prius in every fifth garage. Interconnect the homes and cars and you can keep the lights on when that tree takes out the power line.
Risser stresses there are many details and some technological challenges to be worked out and a rollout date has not been set yet (much will depend on whether carmakers begin production of plug-in hybrids.) There's also the trade-off that if your Prius is generating electricity for the grid you'll probably be using the gas engine more and thus emitting more greenhouse gases. But the fact that a giant utility like PG&E is pursuing such a program is yet another indication of the sweeping changes headed our way.