Newark, DE First to Use Cars to Power Grid

Filed in Delaware by on January 21, 2009

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This is very cool — one of the many challenges to making the electrical grid more efficient is figuring out a way to store electricity. The current grid does not, but you can see there might be production and cost efficiencies in being able to store electricity made when it is cheapest or most efficient to do so in an inexpensive and accessible manner for use when it is needed. One of the ideas for that storage is called Vehicle to Grid (V2G) and researchers from UD helped to develop this.

The City of Newark is the first city in the United States to put this idea to the test. University of Delaware Associate Professor of Marine Policy Willett Kempton has the car in the picture and there are currently plans for a total of six in the near future. It is interesting that this news would be released today, when Governor Markell talked about the creativeness of Delaware’s past economic history. While this technology is certainly in its infancy and will need more testing and much larger scale testing to determine its long-term viability, this is exactly the kind of thing that we ought to be figuring out how to nurture here.

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Comments (5)

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  1. Unstable Isotope says:

    Hooray for Newark!

  2. Nurse Thomas says:

    Cool! Way to go UD. Another step in the spot light for Delaware.

  3. Unstable Isotope says:

    Will Delaware become the “green” state? We will have the first wind farm and the electric cars.

  4. anon2700 says:

    That’s the problem… ALL this technology is still in its infancy. Building Obama’s energy economy is going to be very painful, because a lot of these startups are going to shut down within a couple of years.

  5. Unstable Isotope says:

    Over 70% of businesses shut down within a few years. That’s a risk. But the 30% that survive will help change our country for the better.

    I don’t understand why it’s painful. If we keep putting off energy independence, it will be a lot more painful later. I think it isn’t too painful to start switching over before we have shortages.