News

Ford, Eaton, SunPower and Whirlpool Team Up for Electric Energy Initiative

January 07, 2013 by Jeff Shepard

Ford Motor Company announced a strategic collaboration that will demonstrate how a typical American family can significantly reduce their electricity bills and CO2 footprint by integrating home appliance technology with a plug-in vehicle to achieve an energy-efficient lifestyle. The Ford-led MyEnergi Lifestyle® collaboration — comprised of leaders in the home appliance, renewable energy and power management industries — includes Eaton, SunPower and Whirlpool.

Additional featured companies include Infineon and Nest Labs, with its latest learning thermostat represented in the research and implementation phase of the collaboration. Specifically, MyEnergi Lifestyle showcases how combining renewable energy generation with "time-flexible" loads optimizes energy consumption across a plug-in vehicle and home appliances.

Ford and its business associates worked with researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology to create a computer model that calculates the electricity usage of a typical single family in their home for one year and the associated savings with moving to an energy-efficient lifestyle. The cumulative results predict a 60 percent reduction in energy costs and more than 9,000 kg of CO&sub2; (55 percent reduction) saved from a single home. If every home in the U.S. were to implement these energy-saving technologies, it would be the equivalent of taking all the homes in California, New York and Texas off the power grid (32 million homes).

"More than ever, cars are sharing the same energy source as the home," says Mike Tinskey, global director of Vehicle Electrification and Infrastructure, Ford Motor Company. "The time is right for the home appliance and transportation sectors to converge if we are going to tackle a myriad of sustainability challenges in a rapidly changing world."

The average American home uses more than 11,000 kWh of electricity a year, says Warwick Stirling, global director for Energy and Sustainability, Whirlpool Corporation. "But with recent technology advancements in our appliances, a family can use energy smarter and more efficiently," he adds.

"As innovation in home electrical technology advances, so does the need for safe, reliable and efficient power distribution," says Joanne Edwards, vice president and general manager, Residential Division, Eaton. "At the same time, giving homeowners the tools to tap into the details of distributed power for their homes allows them to modify their behavior and further reduce energy consumption."

Most of today's residential electrical load on the grid occurs in the daytime hours. Electrical utilities need to ensure this daytime peak demand load does not exceed their supply capacity. Consequently, utilities in many parts of the country offer reduced energy rates for off-peak usage as a way to incentivize customers to shift their usage patterns to nighttime or early-morning hours. Discounted off-peak hours are typically between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m. Off-peak pricing is normally around half as much as on-peak, but peak pricing can be as much as 10 times higher than off-peak in some parts of the country.

Examples of household electrical loads that could be shifted to off-peak hours via an automated or controlled mobile app include charging a plug-in vehicle, running a dishwasher, running a hot water heater, running the refrigerator's defrost cycle and ice-making.

Additionally, data from electric utilities indicate their power generation mix is based on a higher percentage of clean/renewable energy sources during off-peak hours. Therefore, a family can reduce their CO2 footprint even further by off-peak electricity usage.

Ford's own off-peak electric usage technology — value charging — is available on all Ford plug-in vehicles, including C-MAX Energi, Fusion Energi and Focus Electric, via the MyFord® Mobile app. Value charging is a unique feature that harnesses the power of cloud computing to automatically charge the vehicle when utility rates are lowest, thus helping to minimize the cost to charge the vehicle and the potential ownership costs of an electric vehicle.

Drivers just need to enable a single setting in the app and then plug their cars in without worrying about what time the rates change in their area. The network monitors utility rate schedules and automatically transmits a signal to the vehicle through embedded cellular connectivity to start charging at the lowest cost.

Ford is the only automaker to offer the value charging feature and is working with other companies to allow access to its proprietary database of utility rates — thus enabling similar value charging functionality to all representative associate products.