Valerie Volcovici of Reuters reports that GM, Ford, and Google will promote virtual power plants.
- Virtual power plants bring together decentralized sources of power such as EVs or electric heaters controlled by smart thermostats to bring power to the grid during outages.
- GM, Ford, and Google will work with solar companies to establish standards for scaling up virtual power plants.
- Research shows that virtual power plants can reduce U.S. peak demand by 60 gigawatts, the average consumption of 50 million homes, by 2030.
“With permission from customers, they use advanced software to react to electricity shortages with such techniques as switching thousands of households’ batteries, like those in EVs, from charge to discharge mode or prompting electricity-using devices, such as water heaters, to back off their consumption.”
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