Besides reducing carbon emissions from car travel and ending America’s love affair with the fuel pump, electric vehicles (EVs) can perform another important function: energy storage for renewable energy sources.

GE’s new Txchnologist website has an infographic that illustrates how your (future ?) plug-in can one day become a pivotal piece of the smart grid puzzle. Basic stuff, but the vehicle-t0-grid (V2G) concept is made pretty clear (guide below).

1. Power is generated from a renewable source, like wind, and transferred to the grid.

2. Electricity flows from the grid to EV batteries when there is excess capacity (e.g. when the wind blows in predawn hours). The power flow is reversed when demand on the grid is higher.

3. Customers can control when the smart grid can access battery power from their EVs, which can put out enough power to run 10 houses, and even control how far the battery is discharged.

Will GE’s vision come to pass? It’ll will take massive EV adoption to make it feasible, but at least GE is doing its part to spur demand by committing to put tens of thousands of plug-ins like the Chevy Volt on the road. And with $4-plus per gallon of gas becoming a reality, gas companies may inadvertently be doing their part too.

Source: Txchnologist