Nissan, Kansai Electric Power Co (KEPCO) and Sumitomo Electric Industries are in the process of testing tools to charge electric vehicles via remote control.
Sixty electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles owned by customers and KEPCO will be outfitted with EV switches – control instruments for electric vehicle charging developed by KEPCO and Sumitomo Electric. Nissan, KEPCO and Sumitomo Electric will link their servers to enable remote-control charging, collect vehicle information, and identify available charging capacity.
It is the first test of its kind in Japan, part of the Kansai VPP Project, a demonstration of virtual power plants – systems that integrate many types of power sources to create a reliable and flexible power supply. The purpose is to build up technical expertise and collect and analyze data to evaluate the use of electric vehicles as power sources.
