A car that solves our electricity problems could be around the corner
Think of your petrol-guzzling car standing in your garage all night. Then imagine in that same garage an electric vehicle — storing energy when it’s idle‚ and pumping that energy back into the power grid. New research just published says this is the way of the future: electric cars could store power and become "mobile batteries". However‚ the current technology can "damage car batteries"‚ and several advances in design would be needed for the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) model kick in. According to the researchers Dr Kotub Uddin at the University of Warwick and Dr Matthieu Dubarry at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute‚ energy from electric cars could help regulate the frequency of the electricity supply‚ reduce the amount of electricity purchased at peak times, and increase the power output of the system. "V2G is not going to be easy but‚ if done properly‚ it has a chance to make a difference for both utilities and electric-vehicle owners. We need more research to understand the process b...
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