Rising Hopes that Electric Cars Can Play a Key Role in Storing Wind Power for the Grid. By Dave Levitan, YaleEnviro350, 10/14/10. “Will electric cars one day become part of a network of rechargeable batteries that can help smooth out the intermittent nature of wind and solar power? Many experts believe so, pointing to programs in Europe and the U.S. that demonstrate the promise of vehicle-to-grid technology. The United States now has more than 35,000 megawatts of installed wind energy, enough to power close to 10 million homes. Close on the heels of this ongoing renewable energy revolution is another green technology: By next year tens of thousands of Nissan Leafs, Chevy Volts, and other electric vehicles will start rolling off assembly lines.
“The electricity generation and transportation sectors may seem like two disparate pieces of a puzzle, but in fact they may end up being intimately related. The connection comes in the form of the vehicle-to-grid concept, in which a large electric vehicle (EV) fleet -- essentially a group of rechargeable batteries that spend most of their time sitting in driveways and garages -- might be used to store excess power when demand is low and feed it back to the grid when demand is high. Utilities and electricity wholesalers would pay the EV owners for providing that power.”
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