How to Turn Your Electric Car Into a Mobile Power Plant
If you're planning to buy an electric car in 2024, you'll want to compare models' price, range and charging speed. But you should also ask whether the car is capable of powering your home in a pinch. A growing number of EVs coming on the market can tap the considerable energy stored in their batteries to keep the lights on during a blackout and lower your utility bill when rates spike.
This “bidirectional charging” capability also promises to transform electric vehicles into a significant source of energy for utilities struggling to balance renewable energy production and climate-caused power disruptions. As EV sales grow, utilities can aggregate batteries into virtual power plants to avoid firing up fossil fuel power stations when demand spikes.
The 2.1 million electric vehicles now on the road in the US boast an estimated 126 gigawatt-hours of battery storage, according to a paper published in September by the nonprofit Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). That's five times the amount of battery storage currently connected to the grid.
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“The need for backup power and resilience is becoming more front and center as we see more of these extreme weather events and grid outages in different areas in the US,” says Garrett Fitzgerald, a senior director at SEPA. California, for example, is routinely impacted by blackouts from wildfires and heat waves. A quarter of new car sales in the state are now electric, and EVs account for more than 40% of sales in some Bay Area zip codes.
When Ford Motor Co. launched its electric F-150 Lightning pick-up in 2022, the automaker touted the truck's 131-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which can power a dwelling for days with the installation of a
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