http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10171683-54.htmlIBM is joining a Danish project to optimize wind turbine energy for plug-in electric vehicles, the latest sign of the growing interest among policy-makers in smart-grid technologies.
The EDISON (Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks) research consortium will seek to match power generation from wind turbines on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, with the power consumption of charging plug-in electric cars.
The long-term goal is to boost the percentage of plug-in electric cars to 10 percent in the country while maximizing the use of wind energy in Denmark, which already gets 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources like wind. The project is partly funded by the government of Denmark.
Smart-grid technologies can help utilities better integrate renewable energy sources and run the transmission grid more efficiently, said Allan Schurr, the vice president of strategy and development at IBM's Global Energy and Utilities practice, which is participating in about 50 projects.
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