By Stephen Nakrosis, Market Watch, Dow Jones Newswire, March 11, 2022

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Ford Motor Co. said Friday they would work together to explore how the F-150 Lightning electric vehicle can interact with the electric grid and provide electric reliability benefits to the utility’s customers.

The companies said the F-150 Lightning is the first commercially available light-duty truck with bidirectional charging technology. The F-150 Lightning’s Intelligent Backup Power bidirectional charging capabilities can provide up to 10 days of backup power for customers’ homes during an outage, the companies said.

PG&E said it “will explore how Ford’s Intelligent Backup Power technology interconnects to the electric grid, which is necessary for the truck’s battery to power the home, and how it can support customer resiliency during grid outages.”

The utility also said one in five EVs in the country are on the road in its Northern and Central California service area.

>>> Write to Stephen Nakrosis at stephen.nakrosis@wsj.com

To: Duane Nichols, March 18, 2022

Thanks for the site assessment. Placement of large solar farms is very important to avoid widespread opposition from the aesthetic aspects. A positive aspect of solar farms, other than their greenness, is that they tend to employ more local people in their construction and maintenance, unlike natural gas and coal power plants.

This announcement (bidirectional EV charging*) is bound to make EV’s and private PV systems much more attractive and economical. It will probably take a couple of years for the engineering and manufacturing to catch up.

George Neall, near VA & WV border

* — https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pg-e-ford-collaborate-on-ev-bidirectional-charging-tech-271647036668

The proposed location of the Chickahominy power plant was Charles City County, VA. This is one of the first four “counties” or boroughs of Virginia in 1619. Two boundaries are the James River and Chickahominy River, the watershed of this latter extending west by northwest through Hanover County and into Henrico County where it drains the backyard of our house in Glen Allen, VA. My wife is there now where her physical therapy regimen will be completed next Wednesday.

I drove over last summer and spent a day in Charles City County to view the proposed power plant site. This County is very rural and very flat. An area of over 1000 acres had already been cleared as a possible solar panel location. This is a very sunny (hot) area and far enough back from the ocean to be unaffected by direct Atlantic Coast weather. It is swampy and mostly covered by dense pine forests only about 15 or 20 feet tall. Deer hunting there is done by releasing trained dogs that can run among the densely space trees and drive deer out to the clearings. I think this county is ideal for huge solar farms.

Also, Charles City County is between Richmond and Williamsburg on I-64, easily accessible. Dominion Energy has a huge offshore wind project in the works. But, given the crazy new Governor in Virginia, who knows what will happen next.

NOTE ~ The “Power for the People VA” blog of Ivy Main is outstanding. Her most recent article is “Virginia energy policy made interesting” about large solar installations.

https://powerforthepeopleva.com/

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A large gas-fired plant proposed in Virginia has canceled their project, blaming opposition from the renewables industry and state politicians.

This article says the developers are looking to relocate to West Virginia. But the line I found most illuminating says: “In February, an affiliated company known as Chickahominy Pipeline, LLC canceled plans to build a gas pipeline across five counties to carry gas from a Transco line to the planned power plant.

That cancellation was spurred by a decision by the regional electric grid manager to terminate Chickahominy Power’s interconnection agreement because it said the company “has demonstrated no diligence or meaningful progress on the Chickahominy Project since entering the queue in October 2016.”

https://www.virginiamercury.com/blog-va/chickahominy-power-cancels-plans-for-natural-gas-plant-in-charles-city/