HIGHLAND, Md. (WBAL) – It’s common for people to install a charger to use your house to power to an electric vehicle, but what about the other way around?
Brian Foreman is the first man to take part in a program where an EV helps power his home.
His Ford F-150 Lightning truck is not an average pickup truck, but more like a personal power plant.
“One of the reasons we bought it was because we don’t have a backup generator for our house. When we saw that this truck was available, the electric vehicle, and it could power your house in case of a backup we knew we were all in,” Foreman said.
Once Foreman got the truck, Sunrun installed a home integration system that allowed him to use the truck to power his home during a grid power outage.
But earlier this year, he learned about a program to use the truck to power his home even if the grid is on. The process helps take some pressure off the electric grid during peak hours.
“In the summer months, Monday through Friday, when people come home from work and they turn on their air conditioning, they want their nice, cool house, it puts a lot of strain on the grid for electricity that’s available so during those hours between 5 and 9 at night, our truck is plugged in and it’s powering our hose instead of using power from the grid,” Foreman said.
Foreman and his wife are the first in the nation to do this and said they are excited to be pioneers.
“We have been early adopters on a lot of things,” Foreman said. “We were early adopters on Teslas, and we are early adopters on this Ford truck, so it’s something my wife and I are always interested in, being one of the first to do some thing.”
The electric company in Baltimore is enrolling a small group of customers like Foreman. After some data is collected, the utility hopes to expand the program.
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