Australia and India collaborate on green energy management system

Imagine you’re at work and there is a power blackout. Your company’s electrical grid taps into your car batteries. Along with rooftop solar panels and the energy stored in hundreds of your colleagues’ vehicles, this keeps the wheels of industry turning.

It’s a scenario that may one day not only overcome temporary power interruptions, but manage our dwindling energy supplies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the industrialised world.

Joint research and development links between Australia’s La Trobe University and Indian electric vehicle manufacturer Mahindra Reva - one of the first companies to introduce electric vehicles worldwide - are now working to turn that goal into global reality.

The project was announced by Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu while leading a trade mission to India.

La Trobe University Vice-Chancellor Professor John Dewar, who has been accompanying the Premier, said the advanced energy management system will be developed and trialled by Mahindra Reva at its new electric vehicle plant in Bangalore.

The plant’s power supply includes solar panels with a backup diesel generator, which the company would eventually like to replace by ‘harvesting’ energy from hundreds of company and employee cars in their car park.

The project is based on cutting-edge information and communications technology developed by La Trobe’s Centre for Technology Infusion and trialled in buildings on the Melbourne campus since 2008.

The La Trobe system is already used for domestic applications following its successful installation by the university, CSIRO and commercial builders in Australia’s first zero emission house last year.

Among other features, it enables electric vehicles to be plugged into the home grid, drawing down car battery power, for example during the evening peak, and then, overnight when power is cheaper, recharging the car’s battery for the morning.