Ford Teams Up With Eaton, SunPower, Whirlpool and Georgia Institute of Technology

Ford Motor Company announced a strategic collaboration to demonstrate a new system called MyEnergi Lifestyle aimed at reducing your energy use. This is a collaboration between Eaton, SunPower, Whirlpool, with Infineon, Nest Labs, as well as the Georgia Institute of Technology aiming to help a typical American family significantly reduce their electricity bills and CO2 footprint. By integrating today’s smart home appliances and plug-in vehicle technology, Ford wants to show how plug-in vehicles can help you better manage your home energy.

Ford MyEnergi Lifestyle, Not Just Cars. The Georgia Institute of Technology used a computer model that predicts as much as a 60% reduction in energy costs and whooping reduction of more than 9,000 kg of CO2 consumed. That’s a 55% reduction from a single home when it uses the MyEnergi Lifestyle system. To give you an idea, if every home in the U.S. were to implement this, it would be the equivalent of taking all the homes in California, New York and Texas off the power grid, that’s 32 million homes.
  
This Ford MyEnergi Lifestyle collaboration aims to show how electric vehicles, EV and plug-in hybrids, PHEV are part of you life at home by partnering with leaders in the home appliance industry, as well as renewable energy and power management companies.

How Does It Work? By using the latest learning thermostat devised in the research and implementation phase of the collaboration, MyEnergi Lifestyle showcases how combining renewable energy generation with “time-flexible” loads optimizes energy consumption across a plug-in vehicle and home appliances.  Still confused? Think about this way, by creating a real-world example of how attainable, affordable and convenient a sustainable lifestyle can be, MyEnergi Lifestyle collaborators are working together so that your typical American family can use their plug-in vehicle with smart appliances to reduce their energy bill, which in turns reduces their carbon footprint.

According to Mike Tinskey, global director of Vehicle Electrification and Infrastructure, Ford Motor Company “More than ever, cars are sharing the same energy source as the home. The time is right for the home appliance and transportation sectors to converge if we are going to tackle a myriad of sustainability challenges in a rapidly changing world.”
 
Technically Speaking. Consider the average American home uses more than 11,000 kWh of electricity a year, according to Warwick Stirling, global director for Energy and Sustainability at Whirlpool Corporation, it makes sense to use modern technology advancements so that appliances can help a family use energy in a smarter and more efficiently way.
 
According to Ken Fong, SunPower general manager, Americas: “SunPower is offering Ford plug-in vehicle owners the world’s most efficient solar power systems to ensure they maximize emission-free power generation for use at home and for their vehicles. SunPower systems offer the industry’s best warranty, so homeowners can count on 25 years or more of clean power to support their sustainability goals and generate significant annual savings on their electricity bills.” 
 
According to Joanne Edwards, vice president and general manager, Residential Division, Eaton: “As innovation in home electrical technology advances, so does the need for safe, reliable and efficient power distribution. At the same time, giving homeowners the tools to tap into the details of distributed power for their homes allows them to modify their behavior and further reduce energy consumption.”
 
Stay tune for the second part of the article where I will talk in more details about how electric vehicles, p[lug-in hybrids and smart appliances can all work together to better manage your energy use and ultimately help you save money while helping the environment.