Faculty members at the University of Delaware have built an electric car that’s capable of selling back excess stored energy to utility companies depending on the demands of the electrical grid.
"A car sitting there with a tank of gasoline in it, that’s useless. If it’s a battery storing a lot of electricity and a big plug that allows moving power back and forth quickly, then it’s valuable," said Willett Kempton, who’s been developing the technology, known as V2G (vehicle to grid), for more than a decade.
It basically puts your car to work while it’s parked, helping to balance the energy grid. Electrical utilities price electricity based on demand so during the daytime, for instance, energy costs more than it does in the middle of the night. Your car would be able to feed energy back to the grid during the day and then charge itself up at night. You’d set a minimum charge level (i.e. don’t fall below a 50% total charge) and then allow any excess to be sold back to your utility company.
The car itself is currently a modified Toyota Scion. It produces no emissions and can reach 60 miles per hour in seven seconds with a top speed of 95 miles per hour. It’s got a range of 120 miles on the highway or 150 miles in the city and the battery is being tested to last about five years or 50,000 miles before it needs to be replaced.
Car Prototype Generates Electricity, And Cash [ScienceDaily]
The reason V2G schemes make no sense is because 1) no one is going to allow the electric companies to chare and discharge their batteries and wear them out and 2) it’s a pain in the butt to have to tell the electric company your plans for using the car and 3) if the utilities are going to compensate EV owners for wearing out their batteries (which they will have to), then what’s the purpose of “renting” a bunch of batteries that the
utility has no control over and furthermore must create a V2G system at considerable cost - the obvious and most proactical method would be for the utility to simply buy , own and control the batteries itself. The V2G scheme is a braindead idea from some college professor who obviously doesn’t know very much about either batteries or utilities.
Brain dead can’t be helped, closed minded is far worse. I only use my car about 30-40 miles a day. If I could limit the deepest discharge of the car battery to 25-30% I’d still have plenty for my own use. If the utility is willing to pay a portion of the battery replacement fee then I don’t see a problem in principle.
I guess we should look for some extra backup’s provided by ZAP!