HydroOne and Peak Power, a Toronto-based software and AI company, are joining forces to do something that has never been done before: run a vehicle-to-home pilot program with up to 10 participating Nissan Leaf-owning households.
The program aims to challenge the traditional car ownership format, while helping to solve some of the “problems facing the grid in an all-electrified society.” After all, if one of the barriers to EV adoption is entry-level costs associated with the initial investment, what if the purchase of that EV could generate returns?
In simple terms, the program – if successful – will prove how battery storage at a micro level (cars and homes) can be harnessed to solve energy distribution at a macro level (local and regional grids). To accomplish this, the program will pull data from up to 10 Nissan Leaf-driving households using Peak Power software.
Specifically, the companies will look at how an EV could be used to provide backup power to a home during an outage or during periods of peak grid demand. Using this data, Hydro One and Peak Power will garner a better idea of the reliability, duration, scalability and efficiency of this model, as well as the charging and discharging habits of the owners.
In an interview with Electric Autonomy Canada, Matthew Sachs, chief operating officer at Peak Power, explains, “What we really want to do is to tap into the residential opportunity, because then you’re truly democratizing this concept of participating in energy markets.”
Although the pilot details have not yet been finalized, and the current capacity limitations of Canada’s centralized grids have yet to be overcome, the news of this program is undeniably exciting as experts look to ramp up global EV production and incentivise the transition to electric with residential opportunity.
