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| smart thinking |
The EV has the potential to be one of the most transformative technologies ever. Its impacts are creating waves of opportunity through economies around the world together with its co-creator of environmental survival the Smart Grid. Here in the words of the super-smart Christine Hertzog are three examples why:
- EVs will spur more distributed generation, microgrids, and energy storage as utilities look to avoid investment in additional remote generation or transmission assets. Generation facilities sited at homes or at work campuses leverage clean, domestic, renewable forms of energy and energy storage that can be used to charge EVs.
- EV charge/discharge functionality will require new transformers and other upgrades in the distribution network. Today’s installed transformers are not designed to manage bi-directional electricity needed for vehicle to grid (V2G) charging and Feed-in-Tariff (FiTs) situations, and thus need to be replaced. Even if V2G charging is not in place, ageing transformers will get more hours of heavy-duty use since many EVs will charge at night, reducing their former “down time” and accelerating their replacement timeframes.
- EV fleets, aggregated with predictable patterns of charging or discharging, can become mobile distributed generation and energy storage assets and improve the reliability of the electrical grid.
The good news is that the EV and the smart grid spell the end for the fossil fuel lobbyists who are no longer able to make the financial case for oil in cars, in spite of their attempts to outspend the cleantech lobbyists by 59:1. (or to justify the craziness of giving money to unfriendly oil producing nations, or going to war with them if they won't play ball).
