Panel Envisions Power Grid of the Future

Electric vehicles are coming, but reaping the environmental and economic benefits of those vehicles will require a major infrastructure overhaul. Recently, the Rocky Mountain Institute convened a panel of experts to determine how best to update the nation's power grid.

The central premise of the grid will be the "smart garage," which is shorthand for a system in which people can plug their vehicles in at home, in parking garages and at outlets on the street, as Lake Oswego, Ore., envisions.

Car batteries would store energy from power plants that run at lower capacity during non-peak hours (which means at night) and also from green sources like wind and solar energy that generate power unevenly. The vehicles and certain buildings that stored many of them, such as parking garages, could feed unused energy back into the grid.

This is far from a pipe dream, as most of the technology already exists, but according to the Institute it's a matter of integration and building the basic infrastructure. The major player will be consumers, who must first show enough interest in EVs to make the project feasible. After figuring out demand, the Institute will look for partners to begin a pilot system in 20 "seed" cities and — it’s hoped — watch the program grow from there.

They make no bones about the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to get this project off the ground, but the money will be made up quickly in the form of lower energy and fuel costs.

Connecting Cars to the Grid (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Comments

[valero]

Does the cost of this infrastructure include a way in which to collect payment for the electricity. Quite easy to do at home, how would it work in parking garages? I can't see the utility companies giving it away for free, except to make themselves look good as they have in Oregon (Lake Oswego).

I will raise the issue of city dwellers who do not have a garage at home nor dedicated parking spots allowing them to charge at home. When I lived in an urban setting I would regularly have to park the next street over.

Would they then use the infrastructure in the parking garages at their place of work to charge their batteries on a daily basis? If so how does this reduce the demand for electricity at peak times?

The only way I see this working is to get battery technology to a point where a full charge can be received in 5 minutes or less and build electric filling stations.

[Bloke]

It would not be hard for a parking garage to just include a fee for the space. Same with street parking. You might have issues of segregation between those who charge and those who don't though.

Or you could have meters on a plug in station, something like $.25 for 10 minutes of charging (parking additional).

The peak times for electric usage are when people get up in the morning and when they get home from work in the evening. By charging during the day, the additional demand will flatten out the peaks somewhat. Most likely it will still be an increase though.