Collaboration to explore EVs augmenting electric grid

Collaboration to explore EVs augmenting electric grid Electric vehicles might provide more than everyday transportation. The U.S. Department of Energy believes the ever-growing number of EVs on the nation's roads can be energy-storage devices that supply electricity — and resilience — throughout the country's electrical grid. The department took steps to hasten the arrival of such functionality, establishing a first-of-its-kind agreement between itself, national laboratories, state and local governments, utility companies, automakers and others to explore the feasibility of widespread bidirectional charging. Eighteen participating organizations unveiled the collaboration, which aims to conduct demonstration projects and collect data, Wednesday at the Net Zero Plus Electrical Training Institute in metro Los Angeles. Among carmakers, Ford Motor Co., General Motors, BYD Motors Inc. and Lucid Motors signed the memorandum of understanding. Starting in California, the group will evaluate the feasibility of widespread vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-building and vehicle-to-load capabilities — bundled together under the V2X abbreviation that has separately been used elsewhere in the transportation realm to define technologies that allow cars to share information with one another and infrastructure. The partnership may allow fledgling technologies developed within the national labs to be commercially evaluated and deployed sooner, as well as implementation of improved cybersecurity for the grid. Similar projects may be rolled out in other states later. — Pete Bigelow What you need to know

Collaboration to explore EVs augmenting electric grid

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