Electric cars can help the electricity grid

Electric cars could be defined in a very simplistic way as a large battery on four wheels, and with that battery, in addition to moving the car, other things could be done, such as helping to light a house, or any other activity. that needs a current input.

The new electric cars have powerful batteries that are close to 100 kWh, and many cars together can mean a lot of energy available at any given time. That is why there are many people studying the way in which electric cars can receive energy from the electrical network, and when it is necessary to provide energy to that network.

California is the place where there are more electric cars (almost one million and increasing), and they have proposed to analyze this possibility, for which two large companies such as Pacific Gas and Electric (electricity operator) and General Motors (manufacturer of electric cars ) are going to work together on the possibility of electric cars supplying energy to the electricity grid in cases of need.

This is called “bidirectional charging”, and it is the possibility that an electric car can receive charge from the network, or return it to said network.

This is not easy at all, because to begin with, the electrical networks are prepared to supply electrical energy to the outside and not to receive it from that outside. But it’s not impossible at all, and there are a lot of people working on it all over the world. I attach a picture of Mitsubishi.

You can see a video at: https://youtu.be/WTEENrbyeAg

The technology is already available and what is needed is to have bidirectional chargers so that the batteries are capable of receiving or supplying energy. And although this is relatively simple for a private house, things get very complicated in the case of an electrical network; which is where GM and Pacific Gas want to work.

Electric networks transmit enormous amounts of energy, and they have been doing the same thing for more than 100 years, so they have all their systems and components designed for that. Doing it the other way around means rethinking their entire distribution system again.

I am clear that they will start with the easiest, which is to feed a house from the car, to go up in level and feed certain geographical areas, and that these areas will be more and more extensive.

When we put together the challenges of Climate Change, with obtaining clean energy, with electric cars, and with a different way of living, we see that even century-old companies such as electricity companies have a lot to change to adapt to the new times.

We will see how each of us adapts to all these great changes that are coming our way.