A new electricity concept: Vehicle-to-grid

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles seem to represent the most accessible solution currently available for obtaining better fuel efficiency and reducing the greenhouse gases emissions. Furthermore, some persons that help develop this technology declared that it could do more than this and help the electricity grid. Toyota was the first of the big developing companies that revealed a PHEV with the vehicle-to-grid technology. But what does this mean? While this type of vehicles is designed to be recharged at night, when the electric grid is in the off-peak period, it can also contribute to the grid during the peak periods, if it remains connected, by sending power back from the unused battery capacity. This way, the energy that is pushed back in to the grid is cheaper because it actually is the same energy stored during off-peak periods when the price per kilowatt-hour is smaller.

Also the electricity infrastructure will benefit from the fact that PHEVs can help balance the grid, diminishing the gap between the peak periods and the two daily periods when energy demand is very low. Because of the facts stated above and because cars would use energy instead of gasoline, big electricity companies have shown their interest in helping develop Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, as they will probably have a lot to earn from this. They have even thought of a method of offering subventions to the people that purchase PHEVs and use them in order to help the electric grid. This move might be surprising but it definitely can help hybrid vehicles have a future by making them affordable to more people and showing them that they benefit from support coming from every direction, excepting probably the big oil companies.