New Hope Climate Start-Up’s Electric Cars Can Power Cities

NEW HOPE, PA — Brent Alderfer is running a national climate-tech start-up, with the potential to reframe our relationship to energy usage, out of his New Hope home.

Alderfer is the CEO and founder of Electric Frog Company, hoping to build a more energy-efficient future where a regular consumer’s electric car can help power a city.

Electric Frog Company announced Tuesday that it would provide Rhode Island’s Burrillville Wastewater Treatment Facility with free use of a Nissan LEAF car, which will then be plugged in periodically to support the state electric grid. The donation is the first of its kind, representing the pioneering use of a customer vehicle to support New England’s grid.

That vehicle-to-grid partnership may sound confusing, and even implausible — but that’s because it’s one of the only ones operating in the country, Alderfer says.

It works like this: Burrillville employees will use the car as, well, a car. Then, on days with high energy demands, they’ll hook it up to a bidirectional charger at the National Grid utility plant, to transfer energy from the Nissan LEAF’s battery back onto the grid.

“With 24 hours’ notice, on a hot day [like today], you’d have the vehicle plugged in from 2 p.m. - 7 p.m.,” he explained. Without this service, the extra demand of a hot day costs electric utility providers a significant amount of money.

National Grid is the Rhode Island electric utility company — like PECO or JCP&L, locally — who Alderfer partnered with to make this unique deal possible.

“We welcome this significant step toward a smarter, cleaner and more reliable electric grid of the future,” said John Isberg, vice president of customer sales and solutions at National Grid, in a press release with Business Wire.

Alderfer explained that, although we don’t think of a regular car’s battery as particularly strong, the battery of an electric car provides a huge wellspring of energy.

“If you’ve got an electric car in your garage, you’ve got days of stored power just sitting right there in your battery,” he said.

Currently, the Nissan LEAF is the only car approved for use with this technology — but Alderfer believes there will be more.

He partnered with Fermata Energy, a company who manufactures bidirectional chargers, to make Tuesday’s deal possible. Fermata Energy’s charging technology uses electric vehicles to “combat climate change, increase energy resilience, and reduce energy costs.”

Alderfer’s ultimate goal is for this bidirectional charging technology, and so the ability to share your car’s power with a state’s electrical grid, to be accessible to any normal driver or car-owner.

“That’s the purpose informing Electric Frog,” he said.

Not only would this be energy-efficient, but it would make electric cars leased through Alderfer’s company much cheaper, and therefore a more attractive alternative to a gas-powered vehicle.

However, the technology is new: before any non-commercial car-owner can use a service like Electric Frog, electric utilities need to determine the financial value for them of using battery-powered cars to supplement their grids. Second, bidirectional chargers need to be available in sizes smaller than those for commercial use.

Alderfer wants to shed light on how mutually beneficial it would be to align these economic and technological stars. He feels that, in the midst of the climate crisis, this technology represents real hope.

“It’s the future,” he said. “It’s a necessary piece. We can’t get there without electrifying — or whatever word you want to use — our homes and cars and transportation. Making that work for the consumer and for the electric utility, both of which have to clean up their act, is just the future. Climate change is the driver.”

Stay informed about what’s going on in New Hope, or in your local area. Sign up for Patch emails and don't miss a minute of local and state news.

Got tips, story ideas, or questions in Lower Bucks County? Email kate.fishman@patch.com.