Electric car pumps energy back into grid

Australian engineers have developed a plug-in hybrid electric car that not only generates power but can pump it back into the grid, potentially reducing running costs.

In coming years, car giants Toyota and General Motors will mass produce plug-in hybrid cars, but researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have gone one step better, developing what they call the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) prototype.

Taking a standard 2006 Toyota Prius, engineers at UTS converted it to plug-in, and then installed additional batteries in the back so it can store electricity, which can then be transferred back into the power grid.

UTS is the first in Australia to develop the V2G technology, and one of the first in the world.

“The vehicle-to-grid technology this car presents could do for the automotive industry and the electricity industry what the personal computer did for computing, and what the mobile phone did for telecommunications,” UTS research project director Chris Dunstan said.

“The extra batteries can store energy at off-peak times and feed power back into the grid at times of peak demand.

“On a large scale, this could level out peaks and troughs in power supply across regions.”

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Tags: electricity industry, grid technology, hybrid electric car, Innovation, peak demand, peak times, plug in hybrid cars, power grid, toyota prius

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Innovation, Project Energy, Sydney Morning Herald. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.