By Nadia Lopez
PG&E Corp. Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe has an unconventional idea for California’s fragile power grid as climate-related disasters, wildfires and heat waves further strain it. She envisions a future where electric vehicles come to the rescue, feeding excess power back during peak demand to stave off blackouts.
To achieve this, she’ll need the auto industry’s help to pioneer a technology that has yet to be scaled up.
PG&E, California’s largest utility, is pushing General Motors Co. to expand on a pilot program from last year and install bi-directional charging software across its current fleet of electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. has been promoting its mighty F-150 Lightning electric truck as a backup power source on wheels, capable of re-energizing homes during an outage, and Tesla Inc. has plans to introduce two-way charging in its models in the coming years.
“We see great potential,” Poppe said in an interview. “The grid needs those electric vehicles. We need to make it available and it can be a huge resource.”
Referred to as “vehicle to grid,” two-way charging works by sending power to the grid from an electric vehicle’s battery while the car is parked and plugged in. Though promising, the technology remains in its nascent stages and comes with significant costs, which has partly stalled its widespread adoption.
The PG&E grid has faced a barrage of challenges from extreme weather. An unprecedented series of drenching atmospheric rivers this past winter led to prolonged outages that left residents and city officials frustrated. The utility has plans to invest billions of dollars to fortify its grid against wilder weather. To mitigate another major risk — wildfires — PG&E is also resorting to deliberate power outages in high fire-risk zones, to prevent its power lines from sparking blazes.
Poppe says these EVs can play a significant role in contributing to grid stability, particularly during…
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