Vermont power company Green Mountain Power (GMP) has successfully deployed what it says is a first-of-its kind vehicle-to-grid charger to reduce energy use on the grid during peak demand.
GMP installed a bi-directional Fermata electric vehicle charger at its Colchester, Vt. office in October. The charger is now drawing energy from the company’s 2019 Nissan Leaf during energy peaks.
The vehicle is regularly used by employees, charges at the GMP office, and joins GMP’s growing network of stored energy. GMP has stored energy in home batteries like Tesla’s Powerwalls.
For context, the Nissan EV battery holds about four times as much energy as one Powerwall “showing great promise in the amount of energy storage that can be achieved using vehicles, especially as more and more Vermonters make the switch to EVs,” the company said in a Dec. 3 news release.
Vehicle-to-grid technology “has long been viewed as an important part of a cleaner, more resilient energy system,” GMP said. The energy sharing helps reduce demand on the grid during energy peaks, when power can be most expensive and carbon intensive for customers.”
Virtual Peaker makes the software platform that GMP will be using to integrate the charger and dispatch the battery during energy peaks. Virtual Peaker’s software is already used by the company to manage other devices like Powerwalls. GMP also partnered with Fermata Energy on this project
“GMP is the first utility dispatching power directly to their distribution grid leveraging V2G technology integrated with a demand response management system software platform. Together, this work is helping GMP reduce system-wide peaks to save GMP customers money,” said David Slutzky, founder and CEO of Fermata Energy.
GMP plans to launch a pilot program for customers in the coming year and offer this option to businesses who are electrifying their fleets of cars and busses.
Additional information is available here.
Snohomish PUD signs deal to move forward with vehicle-to-grid charging
Snohomish County Public Utility District in Washington State has contracted with Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi ABB and Doosan GridTech to install two electric vehicle-to-grid (V2G) chargers.
The V2G chargers are being sited at Snohomish PUD’s Arlington microgrid site and will be able to charge an electric vehicle and also send the stored energy back to the grid during a power outage.
Austin Energy
Texas public power utility Austin Energy’s Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar Photovoltaics project includes a vehicle-to-grid component.
The goal of the overall project is is to optimize the value stream for solar and storage with a business model developed for grid, commercial, and residential applications.
