Consert, Inc., based in Raleigh, N.C., provides a market-driven, incentive-based solution to utilities, residences and small businesses by which they can conserve energy, save money, eliminate the need for new construction of peak-consumption generator facilities and begin the transition to alternative, renewable energy sources. In addition to a patent-pending method to locate, measure, aggregate and verify carbon savings, a Consert smart grid can report and manage alternative energy sources which facilitates the installation of solar and wind generators as well as the adoption of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
plug-in vehicles
US power company GE has endorsed the European Union Commission’s introduction of a smart grid roadmap to border-neutral carbon reduction.
The commitment will involve Smart grid technologies will be used in an EU-wide smart city strategy that will see smart meters deployed in homes, together with technology to optimize renewable generation and accommodate plug-in electric vehicles.
Toyota announced on Monday plans to begin selling “several tens of thousands” of plug-in versions of its popular Prius hybrid in 2012, as Hiroko Tabuchi reports.
In another article in The New York Times today, Matthew L. Wald describes how the rollout of so-called smart meters – which are promoted by electric utilities as a way to save ratepayers money over the long term because they allow for variable electricity rates – is meeting resistance from skeptical consumers, who do not appreciate the meters’ up-front price tag.
via The Dawn of Plug-In Priuses and Smart Meters – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.
Imagine going to the gas station to fill up your car. You fill your tank but there is nothing on the pump to tell you the price per gallon or how many gallons you put in your tank. Instead of paying right there, you drive away and the oil company sends you a bill at the end of the month. By the time you know that price has gone up, you have already bought and used the gas … and now you just have to pay for it. Not a very consumer-friendly way to do business.
Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA) is launching a 3-year pilot project aimed at helping households and businesses save more on electricity bills. The initiative comes on the back of higher consumption patterns and more diversified energy sources. Due to the current design of Singapore’s electricity grid, users do not know how much electricity is used until the monthly power bill. The growing use of renewable/alternative energy like wind power and solar power will also create complications as power sources become intermittent and variable.
Toyota is donating 10 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to a research project aimed at monitoring how plug-ins interact with Xcel Energy’s SmartGridCity project in Boulder.
The 10 cars — part of a 150-car plug-in demonstration fleet that Toyota plans to release in the United States early next year — will be studied by the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, a joint institute of the University of Colorado and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
via Toyota donates 10 plug-ins to a study of Boulder’s smart grid – Boulder Daily Camera.
California’s push to lead U.S. sales of electric cars may result in higher power rates for consumers in the state, as a growing number of rechargeable vehicles forces utilities to pay for grid upgrades.
The autos’ effect on electricity fees is being reviewed by California’s Public Utilities Commission this month as the most populous U.S. state will require Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co., Ford Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. to sell more plug-in vehicles from late 2011.
Power companies including Southern California Edison, the state’s largest, have to install new transformers and meters to handle greater demand and prevent blackouts when autos are being charged at outlets. Utility rates will rise to cover the costs, said Travis Miller, a Morningstar Inc. analyst in Chicago.
via California electric-cars push may raise power costs – Finance and Commerce.
Like a complex jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces, the picture of a smart electric power grid is slowly beginning to take shape in the United States, along with predictions of big energy savings and emission reductions that could come with it.
The scattered placement of the pieces is a work in progress, with much of the action controlled by states. Some have embraced a clear vision of this revolution in the way electric power can be delivered, used and priced. In many more states, the picture is cloudy or incomplete, restrained by the historic caution of state regulators and the self-interest of some utilities.
via A National ‘Smart Grid’ Remains a Vision With Many Gaps – NYTimes.com.
Just two months ago, Ford Motor launched a trial of a software system meant to enable communication between its plug-in vehicles and the power grid, by way of smart meters and a Zigbee wireless connection. At the time, Ford’s Nancy Gioia, recently named director of Ford Global Electrification, told us Ford would consider developing a production version of the system. While it won’t be ready for the first generation of plug-in vehicles, Gioia said today at an event in San Francisco, that “by 2013-2015, this ought to be rolling out.”
via Ford Aims to Connect Its Plug-In Cars with Smart Meters by 2015.
Mother Nature News has a post on a some recent comments by Google’s Dan Reicher on the company’s interest in developing software for managing the recharging of electric vehicles – Google creating software to make plug-in hybrids more efficient.
In its continual climb to take over what seems to be just about every industry, Google announced today that the company is writing software that will help fully integrate hybrid electric cars into the power grid. The new software will help utility companies better manage the load of this burgeoning auto technology, particularly during peak hours.
via Peak Energy: Google creating software to make plug-in hybrids more efficient.
Ford Motor Company has developed an intelligent charging system that previews how its production vehicles will interact with the grid. The unnamed system enables all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners to restrict charging to when electricity prices fall below a certain threshold, or even “when the grid is using only renewable energy such as wind or solar power,” according to Ford.
There’s a natural synergy for customers to put solar on their homes and buy hybrids/EVs, who can then drive free of fossil fuel guilt.
In its ongoing testing of converted PHEV Ford Escapes, the company is leveraging communications systems it designed including SYNC, SmartGauge, and Ford Work Solutions. The vehicles are communicating with the grid through smart meters over a wireless network using the Zigbee protocol, but Ford hasn’t committed to a network platform for its production vehicles.
via Ford Develops Open Source EV Communications for Smart Meters – Solutions for Alternative Energy.
Having too many plug-in hybrid cars actually plugged in could blow up the grid — or at least knock out a few localized transformers.
That’s the message from one utility executive, anyway, speaking at the 2009 Plug In conference in California. But even if it’s true, Boulder’s transformation to the nation’s first smart-grid city will likely keep the local grid intact.
Here’s the story as reported in Scientific American:
“We have a lot of challenges before us to help make this market a reality,” said Ed Kjaer, director of Southern California Edison’s electric transportation advancement program.Chief among those challenges is how thousands of power-hungry vehicles would tax distribution transformers at the local level. Such transformers have historically handled electricity load for about 10 average-size homes each.
Adding a plug-in car to the grid is equal to about a third of a house, Kjaer said. And because early adopters are likely to spring up in geographic concentrations, that could mean overloaded transformers at the distribution level or plug-in cars potentially causing power outages.
“The worst imaginable situation you could have is your neighbor yelling at you because you blacked out the neighborhood,” Kjaer said.
As more and more vehicles start plugging into the electric grid, utilities will need to manage the plug-in connections, or risk overloading the system. Seeing an opportunity to address that basic challenge, last year smart grid company GridPoint acquired startup V2Green, which had developed smart charging software for electric vehicles. Now less than a year after that acquisition GridPoint is set to launch its most advanced tool yet for utilities looking to track and predict loads from plug-in vehicles. GridPoint’s customers won’t be able to get the upgrade until September 4, but we saw a preview of the software this afternoon at the Plug-In 2009 conference in Long Beach, Calif.
Called “Smart Charging 3.0,” the new software is coming out just in time for the charging infrastructure buildout from ECOtality subsidiary eTec and several strategic partners, which won $99.8 million in grants from the Department of Energy last week. According to a release from GridPoint this week, the company has been working with the Idaho National Lab and eTec for more than a year on “electric vehicle performance and fast-charge systems.”
The big change from earlier versions of the Smart Charge system, GridPoint’s Seth Bridges explained to us, is that utilities will now have visibility into plug-in vehicles’ charging needs, patterns and storage capacity over a wider window of time. In addition to being able to scroll back over the past hour, day week or month of data (previously, graphs displayed only the last minute), utilities will also be able to view a forecast based on past patterns — when wind power capacity can be expected to peak each day, for example, and how power demands from vehicles usually vary over a 24-hour period.
