SAN RAMON, Calif. — Friday Apaliski and her husband moved to San Francisco in 2019. Their first utility bill, more than $500, was a rude shock.
Apaliski is director of communications at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a group that aligns stakeholders on a path to transform the nation’s buildings through clean energy. She and her husband enrolled in PG&E’s Powerhouse program to re-electrify their home.
A key feature of the program is using your electric vehicle to power your home. For Apaliski, the redesign brought her monthly utility bills down to almost zero.
Power outage backup
The technology is based on bidirectional power and exportable power, which almost all new electric vehicles possess. PG&E notes that EVs can be a power source for a variety of tasks, from morning coffee to lighting up your entire house’s holiday lights.
Bidirectional power is becoming more common, since reversing the flow of electricity is relatively easy. And green electrical grids can serve as backups on occasions when there is a power outage. The right kind of battery on an EV could power a house for several days, says PG&E.
With two-way power ability, EVs could flow power back into the grid in times when the grid’s ability to generate clean power is low, such as at night when solar power is not producing energy, said the company.
Green energy
Apaliski’s family no longer needs to burn fossil fuel to heat their home, or to warm water for showers or cook food. Apaliski told American Community Media she feels confident she is doing her bit in reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Top officials of PG&E, the largest utility company that provides gas and electricity to around 16 million people across California, unveiled a first-of-its-kind fully electrified home at their headquarters here April 17. They demonstrated how clean energy technologies can work together in real homes.
Powerhouse
The PG&E Powerhouse in San Ramon has been designed as both an all-electric home and a grid-edged innovation lab. It allows customers and policy makers to see how an all-electric home works in real life — from energy management to adaptability during power outages. PG&E partnered with SPAN, GM Energy, Tesla and Pila Energy in designing the Powerhouse.
For the demonstration, a brightly lit, fully equipped ADU on the campus went dark for a few minutes during a staged outage. Event organizers quickly slipped a charger into a Tesla Cybertruck parked a few feet away to show how electrical vehicles could serve as home energy backups to provide green grid support when such contingencies arise.
The shelf life of an electric vehicle battery is around 10 years depending on how it is used according to Paul Doherty, PG&E’s manager of clean energy and innovations programs. He told ACoM that the utility company offers customers incentives to offset the cost of “re-electrifying” their homes.
Greening the future
Tesla isn’t the only car manufacturer the utilities company has worked with to promote the state’s clean energy program. General Motors and Ford are among the others. And the utility company is partnering with other car companies to promote the use of electrical vehicles.
As Apaliski says: “Electrification is key for a clean future. It’s good no matter how you get to it.”
