How Electric Cars Could Save the Grid

"The utilities understand the value immediately," said team leader Willett Kempton, associate professor of urban affairs and public policy, also at the University of Delaware.

Communication between the power company and the electric car owner would occur via the Internet or some other wireless network, such as a cellular phone network.

Car manufacturers may be the last to clue in, though. For the system to have the most value, electric cars need to be equipped with a high, 80-amp/240-volt plug -- something a little more powerful than the plug on an electric dryer. (An electrician can install the corresponding outlet into any home.) But most of the existing electric hybrid cars come equipped with a low, 15-amp, 110-volt plug.

Sure, the low-amp plugs work, said Kempton, but if the electric car owner is selling electricity back to the grid, they want to sell as much as possible. A 15-amp plug could net a car owner about $400 year, whereas an 80-amp plug could net $4,000, he said.

The good news is that, unlike other alternative energy sources, such as hydrogen fuel, the infrastructure for electric cars is already there.

"The only thing you have to do is enhance it a little bit," said Victor Udo, manger of business planning and research at Pepco Holdings, a utility in Wilmington, Del., that is working with the V2G project to help put the idea into action.

To date, the V2G team successfully connected one prototype electric car to the grid and was able to charge the battery as well as draw energy from it. They are now working to do the same with four to six vehicles. Eventually they will work with local utility customers to test a fleet of 100 to 300 cars -- enough to supply a utility company with 3 megawatts of backup power.

In the future, electric vehicles could do more than provide backup energy. If just a quarter of the nation's cars were electric -- about 50 million cars -- the power capacity of those batteries would be equal to 700 gigawatts, the entire power production capacity in the United States today.

Related Links:

Tracy Staedter's blog: What the Tech?

How Stuff Works: Electric Cars

The Vehicle to Grid Project