California Utility Wants to Reuse Hybrid Batteries
Agent009 submitted on 6/12/2007 Official Bell & Ross Timestamp: 5:54:59 PM
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California utility PG&E has given Green Wombat an exclusive look at new technology that could provide a big boost to both the nascent electric car market and renewable energy production.
In the coming years, the utility plans to buy thousands of plug-in hybrid and electric car batteries once they've outlived their usefulness for transportation and install them in the basements of office towers and at electrical substations to store green energy.
That will cut peak demand for expensive - and greenhouse gas-emitting - electricity. On a recent morning Green Wombat went down to a sub-basement below PG&E's (PCG) San Francisco headquarters where the utility parks its plug-in hybrid Toyota (TM) and Mercedes fuel-cell car. Against one wall a nickel metal hydride battery salvaged from a wrecked Prius sat on a metal cart attached to an inverter that converts the battery's DC power into AC power. The setup is hooked up to an electrical meter, a fluorescent light and a portable heater. (In the photos, the Pruis battery is on the middle shelf; the inverter is on the top left.) "The meter is spinning anti-clockwise right now," says Sven Thesen, PG&E's supervisor for clean air transportation. "That means we energy is coming out of the building and powering the meter. PG&E is paying for this right now." A minute later the meter begins to spin in the opposite direction and the lights and heater come to life as the 1.3 kilowatt/hour Prius battery uploads electricity into the power grid.
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