The Next Tool in the Climate Toolbox: Your Parked EV
The Next Tool in the Climate Toolbox: Your Parked EV
John Wheeler, CFO of Fermata Energy, is pictured near one of the company's smart chargers in Brooklyn, New York. Photo by CJ Clouse.
The cathedral of a structure that houses the Newlab technology center is large enough to build navy ships in. It stretches across 84,000 square feet and rises 70 feet into the air on steel beams that support a ceiling made of glass. Located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the banks of New York’s East River, several generations of workers did, in fact, build ships and submarines for the U.S. Navy here, from 1801 to 1966.
Today, tech entrepreneurs research, design and build all kinds of things inside Newlab’s shared workspace and "hatchery" for socially oriented tech manufacturing — from smart indoor farms to all-weather, four-legged robots. What I came to see, though, is sitting outside in the parking lot: a 2021 Nissan Leaf Plus with a 62-kilowatt lithium-ion battery, connected by a charger cable to a metal box that contains a bidirectional charger. The charger belongs to Fermata Energy, a Charlottesville, Virginia-based startup that has developed software that enables the electric vehicle’s battery to supply energy to the Newlab building towering above it.
"Literally right now, this car is helping to power that building," said John Wheeler, Fermata Energy’s chief financial officer, who’s been keeping an eye on the system on his laptop. "It’s not powering all of it, but a portion of it to help reduce electricity costs."
The software in use at Newlab monitors the building’s electricity consumption to avoid demand charges, costs that kick in when usage rises above a certain threshold. When the building’s consumption climbs above the line that triggers the charges, the Leaf’s battery jumps into action, providing enough power to bring the usage back down to the base price.
"Most cars are parked 95 percent of the time," Wheeler told me. "So our mission is to give a car something to do while it’s sitting there, so the owner can get the most value from it."
Founded in 2010, Fermata Energy aims to accelerate the adoption of EVs and renewable energy in the United States in essentially three ways: by incentivizing EV ownership through lower electricity costs; by offsetting the rise in energy demand that will come as increasing numbers of electric vehicles plug in to recharge; and by supplying a portion of the energy storage necessary to make the transition to renewables possible.
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About Fermata Energy
Park it. Plug it. Profit.TM Fermata Energy’s proprietary vehicle-to-everything (V2X) software platform and bidirectional chargers turn EVs into mobile energy storage assets, making it possible for EVs owners to combat climate change, increase energy resilience, and reduce energy costs. Learn more at www.fermataenergy.com, and follow us on Twitter (@FermataEnergy) and LinkedIn.