Can a city run on car batteries? The 'vehicle-to-grid' idea might just work

When Damien Maguire moved to the countryside outside Dublin, he struggled to keep the lights on at home because of the town’s constant power outages. He found a solution inside his electric cars: their batteries.

A tinkerer who posts videos of his hand-built vehicles on Youtube, Maguire devised a wiring system that lets him suck power out of them when they’re parked in the garage. Now that the house and cars are connected, he can also use the batteries to store energy from his backyard solar panels, another power source that’s not totally reliable given Ireland’s weather.

“You have the light-bulb moment,” said the 41-year-old electrical engineer. “There’s a big battery in the car, so how about I use that?”

An even bigger light-bulb moment is happening for utilities and automakers, who want to use the batteries inside electric cars as storage for the entire public power grid. The idea, known as “vehicle-to-grid,” is to someday have millions of drivers become mini electricity traders, charging up when rates are cheap and pumping energy back into the grid during peak hours or when the sun simply isn’t shining. If it works — and it’s a big if — renewable energy could get much cheaper and more widely used.

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Renault expects electric cars and emerging markets to boost sales

French carmaker Renault expects a first-mover advantage in electric cars and a wider range of vehicles for emerging markets to help it deliver a 44 percent sales increase by 2022.

Electric cars are "turning into a significant contributor to our performance while other automakers are just starting the journey", Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said on Friday.

Renault's mid-term plan shows it growing faster than alliance partner Nissan, which it trails in China, due to recent investments in Iran and India and a Russian rebound.

While taking a lead in electric vehicles had come at the expense of profitability, Ghosn expects to turn this around with the launch of eight new battery-powered models and 12 hybrids.

"Our vision now is a profitable core business," he said. Renault and Daimler's Smart are likely to extend their small-car cooperation into electric models, he added.

Renault plans to increase annual sales to 5 million vehicles by 2022 from 3.47 million last year while also aiming for a 7 percent operating profit margin and 70 billion euros ($82 billion) in revenue, goals that were announced in February.

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