Austin, TX wants to go with smart grid and plug-in hybrids
I found the above photo over on Flickr and it's tagged as being taken at this year's SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. I thought it fit well with the story I spotted on Treehugger (originally from the Wall Street Journal, which is subscription-only) about clean, green transportation in that city. You don't need to put any petroleum into this four-legged powertrain (emissions are another issue).
The mayor of the progressive city, Will Wynn, and the Austin-based Plug-In Partners have announced a plan to make PHEVs a integral part of the city's energy scheme. The WSJ calls it "ambitious" and "quixotic," but it's really just a smaller version of what some are talking about for the entire country in the coming decades. Treehugger's synopsis says that a localized smart grid will charge the plug-in hybrids at night, when wind-generated energy is at peak capacity, and use the stored power to help feed home and business power needs during the day. If you have a WSJ subscription, you can read the piece here, otherwise Treehugger has more details.
[Source: WSJ via Treehugger]
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