I love most stuff from Google. I use Google Apps and Gmail for my email, I communicate with Google Talk, and I use the mainstream Google Search for my search needs. A piece of interesting news surfaced last week – in typical Google fashion of dipping their grubby mits into nearly every part of your life, apparently Google is working on a way to improve plug-in hybrid car charging. The project is called RechargeIT.org.
They are n the early stages of looking at ways to write software that would fully integrate plug-in hybrid vehicles to the power grid in order to minimize the strain on the grid. Right now of course usage is maximum during the day, especially working hours. Things get much more easy at night when the lights are off and everybody is in bed.
“We are doing some preliminary work. We have begun some work on smart charging of electric vehicles and how you would integrate large number of electric vehicles into the grid successfully. We have done a little bit of work on the software side looking at how you would write a computer code to manage this sort of charging infrastructure,” said Dan Reicher, Google’s director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives.
Managing power requirements of the grid has become very important. A scenario that the Google rep gave was a hot day in July when 5 million Californians come home. You don’t want all of them plugging in their Teslas at the same time! The grid management technology that Google is developing will allow power companies to allow the owners to opt into a system where the power company can turn off a certain number of vehicles to charge, and turn them on later. This is so the number of vehicles that can charge at any one time can be manageable. In return, the vehicle owner could get some kind of credit or discount from the power company, as turning on backup power sources for the grid can be cost inefficient for the power company.
RechargeIT.org includes a controlled Driving Experiment where plug-in hybrid vehicles owned by Google were used by its employees in a free car-share program. Usage patterns were monitored (using an embedded Linux and GPS system) and the average economy reported was over 93 mpg on average and 115 mpg during city trips.
In the process of building its large datacenters, managing electricity has become somewhat of an acquired expertise for the search company. To handle the massive volume of Google search queries daily, Google needs many many servers and these servers need to be powered. They’ve put alot of work into ensuring their servers are as efficient as possible, even down to minimizing the losses of converting AC to DC.
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Google everywhere…I like!
GooCharge it!
Google = Charging Platform
Ebay/Paypal = Tesla EV
…
open Source win.. haha
Hi Paul,
since u love google, might else consider using Android phone…or already using one? :)
i will get myself HTC Hero this wk, yahoo!!
gMail, gMap, gCharge, gBurger…
We should have google logo everywhere in the movie .
Wall-E*
1Google 1World ~
Gmap, Gmail, Google and G-String :)
Hai,
I've never trusted private organization hundred percents. Their motive will always be captivated by money money and money!
I quote:
"The grid management technology that Google is developing will allow power companies to allow the owners to opt into a system where the power company can turn off a certain number of vehicles to charge, and turn them on later".
Sounds familiar? I'm an engineer working in the power generation and distribution industry. We have our very own ways to manage the power grid effectively. Just by reading above, I knew that Google is proposing to implement "priority system" just like we have in the Internet at this very moment. Something like what you get from downloading files from RapidShare or Bittorent. If you want the download to be faster, you'll have to pay more for it.
Imagine this scenario, who shall get the "priority charge"? Of course the ones who paid more will get his or her EV vehicle charged anytime. But those middle income and low income people will have to take turns before their cars gotten charged. Catch the drift.
If this ideas are well accepted by the power provider such as our local TNB (in the future), which means, other than paying for the electricity bills, we will have to ditch more money to get that "priority charge".
Gosh, what people would do to make money.
I hope they start offering WiFi at those charging stations.
G-Spot
=D
Thanks for the find, Paul.
This is a great idea and most importantly for a noble cause – towards a cleaner world
I'd love to get involved in such a project in the near future. Google made I.T. possible ANYWHERE !
google-dom in the work. soon what we know, how we think, what we do and how we do things dictated by google.
1world for all. no more multiple religions, soon will be google is our way of life.