Vehicle to grid using broadband communications

The impending mass electrification of road transport, driven by concerns for climate change and sustainability, enables an opportunity to substantially reduce greenhouse emissions from passenger vehicles and to simultaneously provide services to the electricity grid. Electricity grids are characterised by a lack of storage capacity, which can be provided by grid connected electric vehicles charging and discharging their batteries under centralised control. This paper argues that the Vehicle to Grid (V2G) methodology offers operational, financial and sustainability synergies between vehicles and electricity grids. Broadband communications is an essential service to facilitate the aggregation, distributed control and metering of V2G services. Copyright 2008 Mike Dennis and Bethany Thompson. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.