By Ed SilversteinTMCnet Contributor
Growing interest in electric or hybrid cars means that the United States needs to provide the infrastructure required for the vehicles to get recharged.Michael Valocchi, the global energy and utilities industry leader for IBM (News – Alert) Global Business Services, wrote in a column for CNBC that there are now about 254 million passenger vehicles on U.S. roads, and as electric cars become more abundant, the resulting burden on the nation’s power grid could become enormous.Story continues below ↓ Here are his suggestions:The grid must become intelligent. Analytics software would evaluate the information provided by sensors to help utilities better understand and meet customer requirements, Valocchi said. Utilities can offer consumers a variety of usage plans. For example, a customer who wants the flexibility to charge a car at all hours of the day or night could be offered a premium plan, while someone who will charge a car at night, could get a cheaper plan. Drivers will not always be charging up at home, they will need access to public charging stations – especially as battery life improves and the time for a complete charge is reduced to a few minutes, Valocchi said. There are other questions that will arise, according to Valocchi, such as – Who will own these stations? How will they be integrated into an electrical grid’s distribution system? How will drivers pay for a charge? Other countries are already laying the groundwork for an infrastructure. Israel is preparing the world’s first electric car network, with a half million recharging stations. The United Kingdom also has plans for an electric car infrastructure.The U.S. government has already spent billions of dollars on electric car programs and wants the country to have a million electric or hybrid vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015.The United States needs to create the infrastructure – not just for a million vehicles, but the 10 to 30 million vehicles that will follow them, Valocchi said. In a related matter, IBM recently announced an agreement with the Energy Technologies Institute to evaluate the potential impact of electric vehicles on the U.K. electricity grid.
Ed Silverstein is a contributing editor for TMCnet’s InfoTech Spotlight. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison
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