Quote:
Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford
One of my friends who is an electrician was telling me that there is some form of "smart" electrical grid (terms probably wrong) that you can have in your house.
What it will apparently do is be smart enough to charge you car overnight when rates are lower, and then if your car remains plugged in and is fully charged during peak energy times, it will actually DRAW power from the car to provide your home with power, thus saving you some energy costs.
No idea how that works, or how you program it, but a damn cool idea if implemented correctly.
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It is called a smart grid, but we don't have one in Alberta. Basically, the wholesale cost of electricity is higher during peak times, and lower during the middle of the night. However, since your electric meter only reads one number, you pay an average price for all your usage. Since most people's pattern is about the same, it works out reasonably fairly.
To implement smart metering, the biggest hurdle is everyone would need a new electric meter, which is a huge cost to overcome. We don't have this in Alberta yet, but some places do. It would be a huge advantage to the electrical grid if a bunch of batteries were used in super peak times to reduce load.