I know we have to start something now, but shouldn't we look toward Australia where they already have EV car clubs and are developing an infrastructure to support them at the street level? Watching how Australia handles it, even with their messed up government (so say my Aussie friends), may teach us where we need to improve and we can learn from their mistakes.

Really, EV will only work when if we spend more time and money on the superefficient batteries to run them, then we may not need such a "smart" grid.

Few things:

The electricity generation in this country isn't really related to biofuels/corn/etc.  That's more of a transportation fuel issue, and is in many ways the reason people are interested in EVs, because they're not tied to the petroleum markets, fossil or biofuel equivalents.  

The power for EVs come from power generation, which in this coutnry is mainly from coal and nuclear, with a little natural gas thrown in at peak times or where it's economical.  So there are enough resources to generate the power for EVs to a point.  When generation capacity needs to expand, utilities must decide between fossil fuels and renewable energy.  

Right now they get incentives to choose renewable energy, but those remain challenging to deploy cost-effictively and in a way that generates the needed power at the right time of day.

Scott

blimey - disparate viewpoints!

Yes where is all the electricity coming from? Won't it be like when we used most of the corn production last year to produce fuel and people were starving in Africa and in many other third world countries. When I like the idea of electric cars, I wonder if this will not be like "undressing St Peter to dress St Paul". We want "electric cars to drive the internet", but not at any cost.

yaa from where it is coming ?? i think water and flow is the best source!

Absolutely, there are plenty of vendors pitching IP-based solutions for the smart grid, including Cisco, so this will get a big push.  Utilities are wary of IP in many cases, and have been using proprietary protocols for much of their infrastructure and smart meters, so it isn't a slam dunk at every account, but IP is definitely an option for smart grid.  My feeling is just that the IP network created to support smart grid apps won't also carry Internet traffic.  There are a few cases where a customer can be given the option for very simple thing, like meter reading, to be carried over a VPN on their home broadband connection, but that's only the rudiments of a smart grid and an example of where the internet can be leveraged to carry some customer info, not the other way around.

thanks,

scott

But could the smart grid not carry internet, per se, but carry IP traffic over the electrical system, which would be used to manage the smart grid itself? Much as one can use telnet or SNMP to control a router .

But even in that context, there's no interest in combining Internet with smart grid.  The utilities are so highly regulated, and so focused on the benefits of the smart grid itself that adding carrying internet does not appear to have any real added value or instead be much more of a distraction.  In those cases where they offer services, it has to be parallel and in the case of smart grid would not likely to be allowed to be carried over the same infrastructure, which is authorized under the local PUC.

Scott, I think those are some pretty big generalizations.  A number of public power companies have done well with serving Internet ... at least those who avoid the bpl trap.  As for it generally being regarded as a failure, you might tell that to a number of rural power companies that have invested in broadband and won awards because they brought high-speed to places it was not available and kept it affordable. 

Oh yeah. We still have to generate electricity. I love the idea of wind power and solar, but it is not a practical way of generating electric compared to burning coal.

The cost of hybrid vehicles is still significantly higher than gas burners and if the demand for electric goes up due to plug in vehicles, the cost of electric will rise drastically, even without the prospect of cap and trade.

I do indeed love the idea of a vehicle that gets 100 mpg, don't get me wrong, but the public is truly not driving this demand.

Perhaps my opinion is swayed by watching the push for ethanol and watching the fairly dramatic drop in mpg when burning ethanol enhanced fuel in my vehicles and realizing that we have better ways to get from a to b than just by plugging in a hybrid vehicle.

Just my 2 cents.