- Duke Energy announced it will use its Ford F-150 Lightning fleet to explore how customers in Florida may one day be able to use two-way charging from electric vehicles to power their own homes during outages and help support the power grid
- The company will be adding five Ford F-150 Lightning pickups to its Florida-based fleet as part of this new pilot program
Duke Energy is using Ford F-150 Lightning pickups to power its Florida-based fleet as part of a new pilot program aimed at restoring outages and supporting the Sunshine State’s power grid.
The utility company announced the launch of the research and development pilot program which will test and evaluate the all-electric, full-size pickup’s high-capacity batteries as a grid edge resource. The new line of F-150’s come equipped with two-way – or bidirectional – charging capability, which owners can use to power their homes in an emergency or power outage.
Duke Energy noted that it will add approximately five Ford F-150 Lightning trucks to its Florida fleet and perform additional testing of the technology, with a focus on leveraging homes that have solar energy and stationary storage. The company will also utilize Ford’s Charge Station Pro and the bidirectional charging infrastructure present in the Intelligent Backup Power Home Integration System to test how vehicles can draw power from and feed power back to the grid.
Additionally, the pilot will focus on real-world use cases with the Ford F-150 Lightning to benefit the grid – such as how the vehicle interacts with other customer-owned distributed energy resources (such as solar), and how the truck’s battery performs powering customers’ homes during an outage. The test will also examine how the vehicles will be used to feed the grid during peak times of use, and how such usage might impact the trucks’ batteries over time.
“We’re continually testing clean energy innovations to gauge how they perform in complex real-life scenarios,” said Lon Huber, Duke Energy’s senior vice president of pricing and customer solutions. “Like our customers, we’re excited about the prospects of these advancements, and we’re working to evaluate them in controlled environments so we can find ways to maximize their value and benefits.”
Duke Energy is looking at new ways customers in Florida may one day be able to use two-way, or bidirectional, charging from electric vehicles to power their own homes during outages and to help support the power grid. Learn more: https://t.co/MPnqfASXQf
— Duke Energy (@DukeEnergy) August 16, 2022
There has to be something charging the battery. Ask yourself, ‘Where does the electricity originate?”.