PG&E and GM to Test EVs as Power Source when Grid Fails

New Acronym? Vehicle to Home Power, aka VtHP.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company and General Motors today announced an alliance to pilot the use of GM electric vehicles as on-demand power sources for homes in PG&E’s service area.

PG&E and GM will test vehicles with bi-directional charging technology that it’s assumed can help power “safely” essential needs of a properly equipped home. The pilot will use various GM EVs with plans to open larger customer trials by the end of 2022. Thus a new automotive acronym is born; Vehicle to Home Power, aka VtHP  at AutoInformed.

EVs, of course, play a critical role in achieving California’s goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and already provide customers with many benefits. Bidirectional charging capabilities add even further value by improving electric resiliency and reliability. PG&E, of course, is beleaguered by civil and criminal lawsuits for its corporate actions and neglect that, among other things, ignited the deadly 2018 Camp Fire. In 2020, PG&E pled guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter, the largest homicide ever legally attributed to a United States corporation.

The pilot will include the use of bi-directional hardware coupled with software-defined communications protocols that will enable power to flow from a charged EV into a customer’s home, automatically coordinating between the EV, home and PG&E’s electric supply.

Following lab testing, PG&E and GM plan to test vehicle-to-home interconnection allowing a small subset of customers’ homes to safely receive power from the EV when power stops flowing from the electric grid. Through this field demonstration, PG&E and GM aim to develop a user-friendly vehicle-to-home customer experience for this new technology. Both teams are working quickly to scale the pilot with the goal of opening larger customer trials by the end of 2022.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is a combined natural gas and electric utility serving more than 16 million people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California.