Still, Wade Schaefer, vice president of GM Energy, insists: The reason more people aren’t using their cars to energy their lives is because of “awareness, awareness, and awareness.” To that end, at Tuesday’s event the subsidiary announced two partnerships with utilities: a “stress test of bidirectional charging capabilities with 30 GM employees,” enabled by Michigan’s DTE Energy, and a plan to get 52,000 GM EVs on PG&E’s dominant Northern California grid by 2030. The automaker says it has worked on dozens of partnerships with other utilities.
Still, connecting all those GM cars and contributing to the grid will be a long and potentially winding road. Not all states are enthusiastic about EVs or new energy technologies right now. And even in early adopter states, where lawmakers are enthusiastic about innovative climate and energy policies, vehicle-to-grid technology is still in its early stages.
It took several years for researchers at the University of California at Irvine, in collaboration with Kia and Hyundai, to get a vehicle-to-home charging project up and running in six homes in Southern California. “Here we are two years later — not four weeks later — and utilities across the country are just starting to pay attention to this,” says Scott Samuelsen, who directed the project and is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Irvine. “It’s very new.” The project hopes to explore how EVs’ bidirectional charging capabilities can fit into ordinary people’s lives – and ultimately, save them money.
In March, Washington state’s Puget Sound Energy announced a pilot program that the utility hopes will teach it to work with new types of companies — auto makers, vehicle charging firms — while supporting the broader electrical grid. This project will be completed early next year. Chief among the utility’s functions is to guarantee that devices from different automakers and charging companies can talk to each other using the same types of standards. Clint Stewart, senior product development manager at PSE, describes himself as a “techno-optimist”; He believes bidirectional charging is coming in a big way. But not immediately. “I’m confident that in five years we’ll be at a point where this is relatively resolved,” he says.
On GM’s to-do list: Making sure customers have full control over when their vehicles go off the grid, so they aren’t stranded without a charge when they need to unplug and go somewhere. Ultimately, the system can learn car owners’ schedules, and know not to drain the EV’s charge right before the kids’ soccer practice. There are some things to work on.
GM Energy’s Schaefer is eager to seize the moment. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change how drivers interact with their vehicles and turn them into something much more than transportation,” he says.
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