CLIMATEWIRE | A new California bill would turn electric vehicles into a backup power supply for the state’s troubled grid.
The state wants 8 million zero-emissions vehicles on its roads by 2030, and “if less than 10 percent of those EVs were to be utilized in this way, it would have more gigawatt capacity” than the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., Skinner said. “So there's great potential here.”California announced last week that more than 1.
Any inverter connected to the grid needs an Underwriters Laboratories certification. That requires testing “to make sure that it doesn't catch fire, that doesn't shock you,” he said. The standards haven’t yet been written for vehicle to grid applications, he said, and until that’s done, it can't go through the testing.
Meanwhile, Tesla plans to have all its cars capable of two-way charging “within the next model year,” Skinner said at a hearing of the state Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications earlier this month.But Tesla cars could be ready because they operate on a closed system, Tal said, where the company makes both the EVs and the chargers.
“The many unknowns of how to implement such a complex and nascent technology are too challenging at this time to establish a mandate,” it said in the letter.