American Honda Motor, IBM and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will collaborate on a pilot project to allow communication between electric vehicles (EVs) and the power grid.
The pilot project aims to demonstrate and test how an EV's ability to receive, send information and respond to charge instructions based on the grid current condition.
The companies expect that increasing use of EVs will drive the need to effectively manage energy demand, while IBM said that it expects plug-in vehicles to grow to 2.9 million worldwide by 2017.
The project is expected to ease concerns that the grow in EV numbers will put excessive strain on electricity supplies.
By using IBM's cloud based software platform on Honda's Fit EV battery electric vehicles (BEV), the project will demonstrate how the solution can manage energy flow by communicating with the grid and the car.
PG&E senior director for consumer products Saul Zambrano said the pilot project with IBM and Honda will help the company demonstrate that third-party providers have the systems and capabilities to help meet some of the challenges that electric vehicles could place on the power grid as their adoption increases in the coming years.
"With updated charging patterns for EVs, we have the ability if needed, to shift demand to non-peak times to ensure the reliability of the grid so that we can continue to deliver safe, reliable and affordable energy to our customers," Zambrano said.
