As part of its response to climate change and other megatrends, Siemens is working with researchers to integrate vehicles into power grids, Siemens Taiwan’s president and chief executive officer Peter Weiss said last week.
Speaking to students at the National Taiwan University Global MBA Forum Series, Weiss said on Wednesday that the company is working with Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) to update a smart power grid system, which would further efforts to collect feed-ins from renewable energy sources.
SMART METERING
Under the partnership, a control center for the program has been established and the two companies intend to implement smart metering, a method to provide real-time energy use information that encourages consumers to reduce their energy consumption.
However, one of the challenges facing energy companies is how to store energy produced by renewable energy sources. For example, solar energy can be collected when the sun is shining, but facilities are not yet in place to store that energy for later use.
MISSING LINK
Weiss said that Siemens is working on plans to include the batteries in electric cars as a crucial component of the smart grid system. In the coming decades, the batteries could provide the missing link, allowing power companies to store the energy collected from renewable energy sources.
HARBORS PROJECT
Siemens is also working alongside harbors to eliminate emissions from shipping vessels as they transfer their payloads, which is especially important as 100 percent of the energy used by these vessels as they idle in harbors comes from burning diesel, which is a highly polluting and inefficient source of energy, Weiss said.
Now as part of its SIHARBOR program, Siemens has developed the technology to allow the vessels to plug into the public power grid to eliminate 80 percent of the pollution and noise generated by the vessels in the harbor and reducing their energy costs by 50 percent, Weiss added.
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