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California is moving towards electric vehicles within the next decade. With recent grid problems, the state’s EV schedule seems rushed. Heatwaves are taxing the Golden State’s power grid, raising questions about how it plans to power electric vehicles when power is initially low.
But those same performance-hungry cars could become unlikely allies, according to Wired, as California — and the rest of the country — struggles to keep its lights on.
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Wired’s article explains a lot about vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology and how California hopes to use bi-directional charging to strengthen its grid. The idea behind V2G is not really new: just as electricity can be taken from the grid and stored in an electric vehicle’s battery, electricity can also be fed back in to stabilize it.
Similar programs are already underway across Europe and Japan, but V2G is often seen as having limited applicability. We’ve seen it deployed in small, idyllic communities, as if the technology couldn’t scale. I think it’s hard to imagine that a single EV can do much to bolster a strained US electric grid, but millions of EVs at once could make a big difference.
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Now, with new gas-powered cars being phased out in California by 2035, the National Resources Defense Council says the state could have 14 million electric vehicles in service by then. And if utility companies tapped into those EV batteries, they could power every home in the state for three full days. It’s worth it.
The hardest part of V2G proliferation will be standardization: there are just a lot of variables between different utilities, charging companies and EV manufacturers. One executive compared it to the California solar industry, which introduced bidirectional power and was initially a bit messy to implement but is now commonplace.
The other difficult part is convincing EV owners to give back the energy stored in their car batteries. Utilities say it’s not as hard as it sounds; People just need a little nudge. This can be in the form of cheaper electricity tariffs or a payment for returned electricity. Customers could even choose to power their own homes first to seamlessly weather outages. It’s pretty much win-win and way more viable than people think, even in US states like California or Texas. I would never have labeled either of these as a “solarpunk” setting, but we’re getting there.
You can read more about how electric vehicles could end up saving the US power grid instead of bringing it down by clicking here.
Photo: J. Brown (Getty Images)