Smart Garage Charrette Documentation

The Year is 2025

“A typical day might go something like this: after work, you drive home in your plug-in-hybrid, pull into the garage and connect your vehicle to a power cord that connects to your house. Your car and house ‘shake hands’ – the car tells your house the state of its battery, and the house’s energy management system figures out how best to charge your car. The car then spends part of the night recharging on cheap electricity that comes from a new big wind farm. In fact, your car charges in sync with how fast the wind is spinning the turbines – guaranteeing you are only getting ‘green’ electrons. In the morning, you check your home energy dashboard to review the status of your car’s charge,

and you happily drive to work in your vehicle, which uses electricity most of the time. If your commute takes a few extra turns, an efficient little biofuel, gasoline, or diesel engine comes on to provide extra range.

You get to work, drive into the parking lot, and plug your car into another electric charging system. It automatically recognizes your car and links to your credit card and your utility account. Your car and utility share information in both directions – how much electricity the battery has or needs, how much it costs (now and perhaps later in the day).

Say it’s a hot summer day, and electricity is in high demand and more expensive. Based on your preferences, the utility and the vehicle converse. The car declines the day’s charging because the price is extremely high. In addition, the utility would prefer to draw power from the car and pay its value back to your credit card. The price is right, so your car, seeing a juicy “carbitrage’ opportunity, decides to use its electrical storage to earn you some money. At 5 p.m., you climb into your pleasant, pre-cooled car and drive home mostly on advanced, environmentally-friendly biofuel.”

(Smart Garage Charrette Documentation, Rocky Mountain Institute, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )