PG&E Teams with Google to Demonstrate Vehicle-to-Grid Technology at the Company's Mountain View Campus
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Shares Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle Upgrade Expertise; To Award Record Commercial Solar Rebate
SAN FRANCISCO, June 19 - 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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