GridWise sets aside four days in April to work on U.S. smart grid
Car fanatics like to talk of the open road, a sense of adventure, and the amazing places and faces they meet when road tripping. They don't like to talk, not as much anyway, about the highway system. So, if you're and AutoblogGreen reader who's into The Drive, thanks for stopping by, but this post is about the highway system. Well, a modern equivalent, anyway.
The only way that plug-in electric cars are going to reach their full potential is with the installation of a smart grid. I'm not saying the current electric grid is dumb, but it is. Electricity meters are located on building, and PHEVs might require sanctioned meters on the vehicles themselves. And not just any meters either, but meters that can be set to purchase energy only at certain times or prices (storing the energy for later use in the PHEV's battery) and upload energy back to the grid when demand is strong. If you'd like to know more on the potential of a smart grid, click on any of the links at the end of this post.
The news in all of this is that at the end of April, the GridWise Alliance and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability will be holding a major conference, called "GridWeek 2007," at the end of April to see just how quickly a smart grid can be implemented in America. I'm guessing it'll come sometime after the Chevy Volt's production version is released and two decades before the hydrogen economy is up and running.
GridWise is made up of many big players in the energy industry. What surprises me is that Southern California Edison, which will be bringing smart meters to every customer in California by 2013 and is a huge proponent of plug-in vehicles, is not a member. Is there a story there?
Related:
- California utility Pacific Gas & Electric previews future energy grid
- Interview with Michael Brylawski of RMI part three - Hypercars and Vehicle To Grid theory
- Plug-in hybrids could be a benefit to the electrical grid
- U.S. electric grid has capacity for a lot of plug-in hybrids
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim 12:52PM (1/31/2007)
Distributed energy production (solar PV, wind etc.) and storage (battery etc.) makes a hell of a lot more sense than the lunatic’s “Hydrogen Economy.” http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/01/opinion_introdu.html
We can have V2G with batteries and biofuels Decades faster, $Billions cheaper and 4X more efficiently than batteries and fuel cells. V2G with waste, cellosic (switch grass etc.), algae or other non-food based biofuels will help our farm families and it is much greener than V2G with Hydrogen when you consider the ENTIRE energy cycle especially when you take into account that leaking Hydrogen will destroy the ozone layer of our biosphere. Plus terrorists can’t use distributed energy as a terror target of opportunity as they can with giant containers or tankers of highly explosive Hydrogen. Hydrogen is primarily made from reformed “natural” gas which by the way has 4X the energy of Hydrogen. http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/h2_eco.htm http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/h_scam.htm.
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