Vehicle-to-grid innovator gets scooped up by GridPoint
Arlington, Virg.-based GridPoint Inc., a leading smart grid platform developer, has acquired a small Seattle company called V2Green, which is leading the charge — excuse the pun — toward grid-vehicle interaction as electric-car development gathers momentum. Basically V2Green has “smart charge” software that will synchronize the charging of electric vehicles that connect to the grid, aided by an on-board vehicle communications device that talks/negotiates with the power utility when an EV is plugged in.
GridPoint is paying for the acquisition with $120 million (U.S.) it recently raised, and apparently this is the first in a series of acquisitions it hopes to make. It’s an interesting transaction, given that it’s still very early days before we see vehicle-to-grid applications in action (beyond pilots). But GridPoint obviously sees huge potential in this market and wants to get an early lead.
“V2Green’s integrated client-server solution and on-board vehicle communication device increase GridPoint’s smart charging capabilities by enabling utilities to manage charging of grid-aware vehicles in real time from any outlet within their service territory,” said GridPoint in a news release. “Plug-in electric vehicle management is essential to meeting a surge in demand for these vehicles, while at the same time alleviating stress on the grid. It will also allow utilities to optimize generation resources to reduce consumer costs and minimize the environmental impact of charging the millions of electric vehicles that are expected to come online in the years ahead.”
The company points out an Oak Ridge National lab study which found that 160 new power plants would be needed to handle the additional load if all cars in the U.S. were electric vehicles and were plugged in at 5 p.m. “However, if charging times were shifted to off-peak hours — known as smart charging — only zero to eight new power plants would be required.”
Tags: electric vehicles, EVs, vehicle-to-grid
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
September 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Hey, just noticed you’re on WordPress! Welcome to the other side!
Mark
September 25th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
As I think about it, this type of aquisition does make sense now- admittedly, it is a bit of a gamble. It will take the production of several million EV’s before utilities will have to seriously worry about a lack of available electrons- but with what seems like a large amount of utilities already in conversaion with companies like GM, they may want something like this in place before they actually need it. This is Grid-Point’s chance to get in on the ‘ground’ floor, so to speak;-) (Don’t you dare groan- you started it!)
September 26th, 2008 at 12:33 am
This could be huge. If I only use 4 KwHours of juice any given day I have at least 4 KwHours (see previous post “GM’s Bob Lutz doesn’t like Better Place model” to sell to the utilities at 5 PM for peak AC use time and refill my car at 3 AM when the local nuke plant is spinning at idle because of low usage. I just want to know if using my battery this way is going to void my GM/Toyota/Honda/Ford warranty. This could also be used to buffer erratic wind generation, a parking ramp for every windmill!
September 26th, 2008 at 8:09 am
When I consider challenges for (what the uninterested, nonexpert, over using consumer would call) “the grid” in the recent past I don’t think it will take much additional use to add an additional load on our power grid. I’m thinking a hot summer night, everyone charging the car for a nice clean car ride tomorrow and someone turns on the air conditioner. Also there are delays to getting electric cars on the road already. Making plans now as to how power is going to be available when cars are plugged in and illustrating that to those who wish to delay the implimentation of electric cars is wise.