Technology to Allow Electric Vehicles to Sell Excess Power – Nissan Leaf, GE partner on electric-car grid research

The University of Delaware and and an energy company are partnering to make commercially available technology that would allow electric vehicles to sell power back to the grid.

The university and NRG Energy are working together on the company and technology, to be called eV2g. University of Delaware professor Willett Kempton led development of the patented technology, a "vehicle-to-grid" system that the university said will allow parked and plugged-in electric vehicles to sell extra power that’s stored in their batteries back to the grid when demand is high.

"This technology can be paid well, to provide the short bursts of back-and-forth power that we use to correct imbalances in the electric power grid," Kempton said in a news release from the university. "In the future, this technology will be important for smoothing out the fluctuations in renewable energy production."

Full Story: http://www.govtech.com/transportation/Technology-to-Allow-Electric-Vehicles-to-Sell-Excess-Power.html

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Nissan Leaf, GE partner on electric-car grid research

By Chrissie Thompson, USA TODAY

Nissan and General Electric are partnering to research ways for electric vehicles such as Nissan’s Leaf to connect with homes and electric grids, the companies said Friday.

The research could lead to a way to use the Leaf’s lithium-ion battery as a backup for a home power outage, said Bob Sump, vice president of Nissan’s Farmington Hills engineering center.

Full Story: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/10/nissan-leaf-ge-general-electric-electric-grid-research-/1