S.J. Mercury News SiliconValley.com newsletter article

Imagine if you will your Prius sitting in your open garage helping to provide electrical energy to millions of homes and businesses, and your receiving a monthly check for the service. That's what this article is all about:

"My other car is a windmill: Here's a good way to make payments on that new Prius (in theory, anyway): "vehicle-to-grid," or V2G, a technology that would put idle cars to use generating electricity to sell back to your local power utility. V2G is a nascent technology, and the Prius and other hybrids like it, lack the circuitry to make use of it. But if automakers were to begin building it into next-generation V2G vehicles, we could find ourselves with a remarkable new source of power. Indeed, according to a 2001 study by electric vehicle maker AC Propulsion, if automakers were to make 1 million next-generation V2G vehicles by 2020, they could generate up to 10,000 megawatts of electricity -- about the capacity of 20 average-size power plants. "As electric-drive hybrids begin to penetrate the auto market, you now have distributed power generation on wheels," economist Stephen Letendre told the Christian Science Monitor. "You also have an asset that's sitting idle most of the time -- just waiting to be connected."

So, is this a good idea? Heck, if the money more than offset the shortened life of the car it might be worth a try.

Ken