Sep

Tesla, PG&E partner on “smart charging”

Posted by admin Published in Emerging Technologies, Tesla

Tesla and PG&E have announced a partnership to research and develop vehicle to grid (V2G) technology. The focus of the research will be on Smart Charging. What’s smart charging? whether you don’t know, let JB Straubel, Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer explain:

“Smart charging is a style of V2G in which the vehicle does not supply potential back to the grid. Instead, the vehicle charging rate is controlled remotely in order to support the operation of the grid or to best match load to the availability of intermittent renewable energy resources such as wind and solar. Tesla Motors’ goal in developing V2G is to eventually supply our customers with an option that could reduce their cost of electricity for vehicle charging while supporting greater penetration of renewable energy on the grid.”

This sounds a lot like a solution I posted in a

comment to my interview with Daniel Kammen on the operating costs of electric vehicles. There is decent capacity for electric cars to use the energy grid but there are small things to work out like how much it will cost and how citizens will charge their cars. PG&E has worked with many companies in the past (see urls below) and will soon demonstrate intelligent charging with Tesla.

[Source: PG&E press release]

Original post by Lascelles Linton