General Motors has announced today a new business arm, called GM Energy, which will provide energy storage and management products and services, including stationary batteries for home and business, solar and vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid technology. Much like Tesla has gone beyond manufacturing cars to provide energy solutions to customers, GM wants to help you integrate EVs and solar into the ways you use electricity at home and work. GM Energy will divide its products into Ultium Home and Ultium Commercial offerings, to provide solutions for backup power, renewable energy and even grid stabilization.
GM promises that its EV and Energy products will help to stabilize the electrical grid, rather than put a further strain on it. “The reliability of the U.S. electrical power grid has never been more important,” said Travis Hester, vice president of GM EV Growth Operations. “GM Energy has the opportunity to help deliver sustainable energy products and services that can help mitigate the effect of power outages and provide customers with resilient and cost-effective energy management.” With the ability to draw energy from a plugged-in EV battery through bi-directional charging, that stored energy can be used to power a home during an outage or to reduce reliance on utilities, or to feed electricity back into the grid during times of peak usage.
GM Energy is working with a number of partners to get its business up and running. It’s working with utilities such as PG&E, with which it is running a backup power pilot program in California, as well as companies like on Edison, Graniterock and New Hampshire Electric Cooperative. It has an agreement with SunPower for the development and installation of home solar systems.
Data is also a big part of GM Energy’s business. It will provide energy management solutions as part of its product and service portfolio, including software applications and cloud management tools. Its Energy Services Cloud will allow customers, whether individual EV owners, fleet owners or other commercial entities, manage their charging and energy consumption.
GM Energy home energy and solar products will be available to customers at the launch of the Chevy Silverado EV in 2024. GM Commercial products are available to order now.
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Source: www.autoblog.com