The devices could help stabilize the grid, and make charging electric cars cheaper.
By Kevin Bullis
Monday, March 15, 2010
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This spring, GE will start selling a line of “smart charging stations,” devices that communicate with utilities to optimize charging, for electric vehicles. The technology could be key to ensuring that electric cars don’t strain the power grid, and it could cut down on consumer electricity bills. Eventually, because the charging stations could help stabilize the grid, they could allow utilities to rely more on intermittent renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind power.
Plugging in: The Chevy Volt, due out this year, is one of a new wave of electric vehicles that could benefit from a new charger from GE.
Credit: GM
The GE products come as automakers introduce a new wave of electric vehicles. GM, Nissan and Ford, for example, plan to start selling electric vehicles this year, and others will follow. While other companies already offer electric vehicle chargers, GE’s products could be important because they’re made to work with the rest of the company’s “smart grid” infrastructure, which stretches from the power plant, through the grid, all the way to smart appliances in the home. The company also has close relationships to utilities, which could speed adoption.
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Electric cars could eventually have a big impact on electricity use–charging a plug-in vehicle would account for about 30 percent of a typical household’s electricity bill, says Michael Kintner-Meyer, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. (He helped develop a smart charger for electric vehicles, which PNNL has made available for licensing.) If too many people decide to charge their cars during times of peak electricity use, it could force utilities to use expensive and often dirty “peaking” power plants to meet demand, or even threaten power outages.
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Source: technologyreview.com
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