PG&E Teams With Google to Demonstrate Vehicle-To-Grid
Technology at the Company's Mountain View Campus
June 19, 2007 - PRNewswire-FirstCall
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced
it has teamed with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to demonstrate
Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology at the search leader's
Mountain View campus as part of the company's philanthropic
initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that
contribute to global warming through Google.org. The
two companies also celebrated the completion of Google's
1.6 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic system at the campus,
for which PG&E will award the company approximately
$4.5 million in incentives -- one of the largest commercial
solar rebates ever for the utility.
"Today's demonstration provides a glimpse of what
we're calling the new energy economy," said Brad Whitcomb,
vice president of customer products and services for
PG&E. "Through our collaboration with Google, we are
showing how the high-tech, transportation and energy
sectors are intersecting to meet our country's growing
energy needs and protect the environment." V2G technology
allows for the bi-directional sharing of electricity
between Electric Vehicles (EVs) or Plug-in Electric
Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs) and the electric power grid.
The technology turns each vehicle into a potential
energy storage system, increasing power reliability
and the amount of renewable energy available to the
grid during peak power usage. PG&E became the first
utility in the nation to publicly demonstrate the
possibility of electric vehicles to supply homes and
businesses with electricity at a Silicon Valley Leadership
Group event in April 2007. PG&E shared this technical
expertise with Google to upgrade a number of company-owned
Toyota Prius PHEVs to be V2G capable for today's demonstration.
PHEVs include additional battery capacity, which increases
the vehicle's ability to run completely on electricity
and reduces reliance on fossil fuels, a significant
contributor to climate change. In the future, V2G
technology may enable these PHEVs to offset Google's
peak energy usage with energy from the vehicle batteries
stored the previous night, simultaneously providing
environmental, economic and national security benefits.
Today's demonstration extended the possibility of
V2G technology by showing how a company's vehicle
fleet can connect to the grid via a state-of-art facility
with solar power. In front of governmental and industry
leaders, PG&E and Google showed the reverse flow of
energy from the Google PHEV back to the outlet and
demonstrated how V2G may one day power Google's facilities.
The largest solar installation on any corporate campus
in the United States to date, Google's solar array
can generate an amount of electricity equivalent to
power 1,000 homes. Google will use the electricity
generation to power several of the company's Mountain
View office facilities, offsetting approximately 30
percent of the peak electricity consumption at those
buildings. Converted PHEVs could potentially act as
a repository for excess solar energy that could be
fed back into Google facilities during peak hours.
As an administrator of the California Solar Initiative
(CSI), PG&E will also provide Google with an incentive
check of $4.5 million for the Mountain View company's
solar installation. PG&E leads the nation by hooking
up more solar-generating customers to the electric
grid than any other utility. To date, PG&E has interconnected
more than 16,000 solar customers who generate more
than 100 MWs of solar energy. Through the CSI, PG&E
can provide almost $950 million in rebates over the
next 10 years to help customers purchase their own
solar systems. For more information about Pacific
Gas and Electric Company, please visit the company's
web site at http://www.pge.com SOURCE Pacific Gas
and Electric Company
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