California wants to use electric cars to back up the power grid [View all]

https://www.vox.com/recode/22969335/california-gm-electric-cars-power-grid-batteries-blackouts

General Motors and Pacific Gas and Electric this week announced a joint pilot program to test ways GM’s electric vehicles could help the California utility’s customers keep the lights on, either by providing backup power to homes during blackouts or feeding energy back into the grid when demand is especially high. It’s a significant step towards enabling EVs to become big batteries on wheels.

The idea behind the pilot is deceptively simple: An EV owner plugs their car into a charger at home, and instead of electricity simply flowing into the car’s battery, electricity can also flow out of it to provide power to buildings — a concept called “vehicle-to-grid,” which essentially makes the car an extension of the power grid itself.

The most basic version of this idea entails temporarily cutting off a house from the power grid during a blackout so that the car can provide backup power; at a more advanced level, a collection of EVs working together can act like a large backup battery for the grid at large. In most of the country, the power grid isn’t set up for something like this (simply put, the car and the grid don’t know how to talk to each other). But with climate change hammering the aging American power grid, the PG&E pilot is a sign that utilities are starting to think creatively about potential solutions.


This might incentivize EVs, and help kill those portable generators people bought to deal with PG&E cutting power when there is a fire risk.