Your Prius Could Be Part Of The Energy Grid In Colorado

Treehugger:

Enthusiasts have been waiting a long time to see movement on this front. Vehicle to grid for those who are not familiar with its term, is an idea of allowing the grid to pull power from a plug-in vehicles battery peak periods of high energy draw, such as during the mid day.

These energy companies will then pay the owners of these vehicles for the usage of the energy stored in their batteries. There will be an automated system that monitors the energy draw, making sure that the vehicle retains a certain amount of energy for the owner to make it back home once they unplug and leave the station.

Read the whole story: Treehugger

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

While you read this, also check out how clueless the Washington Post is when it comes to green cars: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/27/22650/066/583/644197

[Drew2011]

Help your own economic standing. Go to www.drew2011.ws and you might be about to afford a car like the prius by getting rights to your own internet domains.

[DRaymond]

This seems like a false economy at best. How much is the average driver going to want to come out to his plug-in-hybrid only to find that the battery is nearly drained? And then what? The gas engine in his car is going to have to run more in order to make up for the nearly drained battery. Is the engine on the plug-in hybrid really a more efficient electricity generator (either in terms of fuel efficiency or emissions) than a modern power plant?

So the electrical company is going to pay you a few pennies for the electricity it drains from your car but then you are going to have to buy gasoline to re-generate the same electricity again. Think you are going to come out on the plus side of that exchange?

[SolarPowerGuy]

I agree with your concerns. I love hybrid automobile technology, but every vehicle-to-grid (V2G) scheme I've seen has not convinced me that I would want to sign up, once I get a PHEV.

Replacing a PHEV battery would cost more than the rest of the vehicle, so why would you let the utility company wear your battery down faster? They have to compensate you for that. Is V2G cheaper for the utility than building peak-demand power plants of other types? I'm not sure. A study would be appreciated.

Now, most of the V2G proposals do NOT have the car's engine starting up to supply the grid. Instead they just drain the car's battery. As you probably know, there's surplus energy on the electric grid at night, and it stands to reason that you would have charged your PHEV battery using this surplus overnight electricity.

[DRaymond]

Of course the V2G proposals don't have the engine starting up because they can't be sure that where the car is parked is ventillated well enough to be safe.

But think this through with me. I drive my PHEV to work in the morning. I plug it in to the charging/d­ischarging station. The Utility decides that today they want my electricity so instead of charging me for topping off the chage in my car they pay me to nearly fully drain it. I come out and rather than a fully charged battery to drive home on I have an empty one and the gas engine has to kick in right away, costing me fuel and possibly forcing me to make an unplanned fuel stop. Will I get more from the utility company than that extra gasoline is costing me? I really doubt it. So why would I sign up for this program?

[Semaj51]

Exactly how may KW hours are they expecting from this system? The amount of energy stored in these vehicles is not that great.

[SolarPowerGuy]

You need many participating vehicles in order for a vehicle-to-grid system to have an impact. The battery capacity of a typical PHEV is expected to be around 12 KWh and, practically speaking, you probably shouldn't take every last kWh from the driver.

However, suppose you could draw 8 kWh per vehicle, over a four-hour period of peak electrical demand on a weekday afternoon. That's 2 kW per vehicle, which sounds significant to me. When time permits, I might do a little handwaving and calculation based on this document:

http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/sector-meeting/4bi_officebuilding.pdf

We should be able to get a sense of the ability of cars in an employee parking lot to offset the energy demands of their workplace.

[DRaymond]

But then what? you come out to drive home at the end of the day and instead of a fully charged car you have a nearly drained one. You have to burn gasoline to make up the difference, undoubtedly costing you more than the electrical company is giving you for the electricity they drained from your car and probably releasing more pollutants than a peaker plant would have caused.

[NeoStar9]

Off topic. Would a hybrid car be effective in a rural area where to anyway city or town you have to travel anywhere to from 10 to 25 miles one way? Up and down mountains? Or are they only worth their money in urban areas where you have a LOT of stop and go traffic?

[SolarPowerGuy]

My family took a road trip from California out to Minnesota this summer. We did lots of 75 MPH travel across open highways. When we were in Utah, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the Yellowstone region, we climbed a lot of long, winding mountain roads.

The ONLY time we got under 40 MPG (measured across a whole tank) was when we were in the Corn Belt flats. 50 MPG was typical, and we even hit 55 MPG crossing Wyoming.

I attribute our comparatively poor gas mileage in the northern Plains states to the fact that nearly all the gasoline sold in that area was a high-ethanol blend. We got one tank of regular gasoline in Sioux Falls, and our mileage immediately shot back up to near 50 MPG.

In city driving I sometimes exceed 60 MPG, for miles at a time.

[EinChicago]

Ummmmm. Only problem is the fact that Toyota doesn't have a PHEV Prius. The announced Gen 3 Prious is basically a cosmetically touched up version of teh current one with no real changes ( alittle more legroom). If Toyota ever actually unveils teh mythical PHEV Prous, this headline may be remotely close to correct. until then, the Prious is basically a fig leaf that gets very slightly better gas mileage than the average subcompact but provides worse performance than almost any sub compact and costs $15K more for the privilege.

[SolarPowerGuy]

"Only problem is the fact that Toyota doesn't have a PHEV Prius."

That statement is true. As for the rest of your comments...

The Prius is NOT a subcompact car, it's mid-sized. It's comparable to the Camry in its interior space. There is no basis for comparing a Prius to a sub-compact. Should someone offer a subcompact hybrid? Yes, and I'm sure that eventually they will. But the Prius is not that car.

Now, as for "performance?" What is this American obsession with "performance?" How much acceleration do you need? Sure, the Prius won't win any awards at NASCAR. But it merges on to the highway from a standstill better than any car I have ever owned. I often find myself accidentally tailgating other drivers as I accelerate up a freeway on-ramp. It handles corners fine, too.