Electric Vehicle-To-Grid Technology Gears Up For The Mass Market – You could cash in whenever your grid operator needs some extra kilowatts
If you could monetize your electric vehicle while it’s parked, would that help motivate you to choose electric over gas the next time you buy a car? Maybe? Good! The US company Fermata Energy is banking on the idea that vehicle-to-grid technology will sweeten the EV pot and help accelerate the trend to zero emission mobility.
It looks like things are really beginning to cook in the vehicle-to grid market. Last fall Fermata launched a V2G pilot project with a fleet of Nissan LEAFS in the US, and all of a sudden earlier this month the company announced a $2.5 million deal with TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), a major player in Japan’s electricity grid.
For those of you new to the topic, vehicle-to-grid refers to the idea that electric vehicles are really nothing more than tricked out mobile energy storage devices. Once you charge them up, you can use that electricity anywhere you go.
Grid stakeholders are also looking at electric vehicles as a platform for grid services, which basically means they will pay you to store energy in your vehicle. That means you can charge up your electric vehicle even if you don’t plan on going anywhere, and cash in whenever your grid operator needs some extra kilowatts.
So, why hasn’t anybody thought of this before? The answer is they have. Commercial V2G systems are starting to emerge in the EU, where a recent study indicates a big payoff for V2G technology.
The US has also begun to dabble in V2G on a small scale, including military fleets.
Read more about it from this CleanTechnica interview at https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/26/electric-vehicle-to-grid-technology-gears-up-for-the-mass-market-cleantechnica-interview/. It's also an added advantage for electric battery powered EVs over hydrogen powered EVs.
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Electric Vehicle-To-Grid Technology Gears Up For The Mass Market (#CleanTechnica Interview) | CleanTechnica Brace yourself for a flood of new activity in the electric vehicle-to-grid field as new bidirectional EV chargers finally hit the market |