Businesses Testing How Electric Cars Will Affect Austin Smart Grid

More and more people are considering the benefits of switching over to electric cars in the next few years. One of the things we aren’t sure, yet, though is how it is going to affect the electric grid if that happens. Pecan Street is an Austin, Texas organization that is helping to study the possible impact that electric car adoption could have on smart grid development in the area. And Austin is really the perfect place for such research.

What is Pecan Street?

Pecan Street is a research and development organization with headquarters at The University of Texas at Austin. They are working to study and develop smart grids to provide a stronger TX electric system that is also more energy-efficient. They are also studying water and natural gas use in the test area. Pecan Street’s biggest project is the Pecan Street Demonstration, an Austin based research project to develop and test a clean energy smart grid in up to 1000 homes and 74 businesses in the Austin area over the next five years.

Electric Car Adoption

As part of the project, residents in the research area have been offered the opportunity to purchase a highly discounted electric car (A new Chevy Volt) to help test how adoption of plug-in vehicles will affect the smart grid. In addition to general research into the impact of the vehicles, there will be research done into integrating car charging with solar power options.

Texas is a Perfect Market

Austin is an ideal setting for researching smart grid development for a number of reasons. One core reason is that deregulation of energy in the state means that energy companies are interested and willing to offer their customers different ways to monitor and conserve energy. Another reason is that Austin has new green-built neighborhoods that can be compared with older neighborhoods to obtain the most information possible about the benefits of a smart grid. What is learned in Austin will help to provide energy-saving information for people throughout the nation.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/austin-studies-power-grid-including-plug-in-cars.html?_r=1