What is the Smart Garage ∨

What is the Smart Garage?

The Smart Garage is a new energy paradigm focused on the integration of how we use energy.  It is made possible by the convergence of energy in the transportation, electricity grid and building sector enabled by plug-in vehicles.  It combines key industry endeavors such as smart charging, Vehicle to Grid, V2Building, and the smart grid.

What are the advantages of the Smart Garage?

The vehicle sector is clearly moving towards wholly or partially electric vehicles.  Utilities are looking for ways to manage existing volatility, smooth load profiles and increase renewables.  Smart Garage offers a way to reap the financial benefits from both industry trends.

Smart Garage bridges the transportation, building and electric power sectors by providing electricity as a low-carbon fuel to vehicles and then using vehicle energy storage for responsive services to the power grid. This optimizes the efficiency of both sectors and enables significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The challenges of creating the Smart Garage

Smart Garage will require deep collaboration between multiple industries to succeed, but so far that collaboration has not happened, and instead, disjointed research and development endeavors continue with little coordination. The lack of a collective vision for the value chain, technical communication, and electronic/data flows associated with Smart Garage has created a bottleneck.

Collaborative and open design can overcome the barriers presented by the complexity of Smart Garage systems. First, with Smart Garage, collaboration and agreement on key principles, earlier stages, and open standards will enable rapid growth without being slowed by incompatible, proprietary hardware and software. Second, developing a clear vision and understanding for the entire system will enable players to recognize impacts and synergies across disciplines.

The Smart Garage Charrette

The Charrette (8-10 October, Portland, Oregon) catalyzed Smart Garage implementation. 

The Charrette was:

• Open Source -- All results are documented and made public for comment
• Diverse -- participants included traditional (utilities, OEMs) and non-traditional (carsharers, retailers) players, from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups.
• Neutral -- RMI has over 25 years of experience acting as a neutral convening party for stakeholders.
• Game changing -- Focussed on solutions that adequately respond climate and economic challenges, both in terms of the scope of the goals (100% renewables, for example), and the time pressure.