Your Future Home Might Be Powered By Car Batteries (bloomberg.com)

Increasingly utilities and automakers are wondering if they could use the batteries inside electric cars as storage for the entire public power grid. An anonymous reader shares a report: The idea, known as "vehicle-to-grid," is to someday have millions of drivers become mini electricity traders, charging up when rates are cheap and pumping energy back into the grid during peak hours or when the sun simply isn't shining. If it works -- and it's a big if -- renewable energy could get much cheaper and more widely used. "We really, really need storage in order to make better use of wind and solar power, and electric cars could provide it," said Daniel Brenden, an analyst who studies the electricity market at BMI Research in London. "The potential is so huge." Today, fewer than one percent of the world's vehicles are electric, but by 2040 more than half of all new cars will run on the same juice as televisions, computers and hair dryers, according to estimates by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Once cars and everything else are fed from the same source, they can share the same plumbing.

Comments

Why?

[DeathToBill]

I can't believe people still think this is a good idea. These people still don't seem to have spotted that the reason you plug your car in is so that it's fully charged when you want to go somewhere. So in ten years' time, you'll hear this conversation:

"Quick! My waters have broken! Get me to the hospital!"

"Wait, no, sorry, can't go, it's been cloudy all week and the grid's left our car with only 30 miles range. Can you hold it for an hour until it's charged enough?"

Don't tell this to my employer.

[LordHighExecutioner]

Or from a "bring your own device" policy, it will rapidly switch to a "bring your own battery" policy to further lower infrastructure costs.