What seemed at first glance like a 'human interest' story of perseverance and ingenuity during a severe ice storm, may actually be a prototype for the new "smart grid" technologies that will play a crucial part in the coming clean energy revolution.
John Sweeney, who lives in the small town of Harvard, Massachusetts, improvised a generator out of his hybrid car to power "his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan, and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas."
In an email to the local paper he explained: "When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius...These inverters are available for about $100 many places online".
Using this set-up, when Sweeney ran the engine every half hour, it charged up the car battery which in turn generated the needed electricity.
The future of the electricity industry, based for half a century on wasteful, gigawatt-scale plants, is increasingly believed to be a distributed network of cleaner, cheaper, more reliable and efficient neighborhood micro-power generators, closer to individual consumers and their needs.
Plug-in hybrid or other electric car batteries that allow consumers to sell excess power back into the grid is seen by many, including incoming President Obama, as an important part of this solution.
[Via the New York Times and The Harvard Press]
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