PG&E Will Pilot Bidirectional Electric Car Charging In California

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will begin testing bidirectional charging in California with new pilot programs announced this week at General Motors and Ford. ["This 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," explains InsideEVs.] [...] General Motors might be late to the EV pickup party, but on Wednesday, it was first to announce that it is working with PG&E on vehicle-to-home technology. This summer, the two companies will begin lab tests with different GM EVs before starting to test vehicle-to-home connections at some customer homes. The two companies say they plan to open up to a larger customer trial by the end of this year. On Thursday, Ford and PG&E revealed similar plans at the CERAWeek conference in Houston. Few details have been made public so far, though we know that unlike in the GM pilot, PG&E will not be able to remotely operate the vehicle-to-home feature on demand. And unfortunately, neither the Ford Mustang Mach-E nor the e-Transit will be capable of bidirectional charging; it will just be the F-150 Lightning.

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