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Siemens to bring smart grid systems to electric vehicle market

German engineering giant Siemens has teamed up with California’s Coulomb Technologies to provide smart grid systems for managing the recharging of electric vehicles.

The partnership will make use of Siemens smart grid expertise with Coulomb’s electric vehicle recharging systems to offer power companies, municipalities and electric vehicle suppliers to manage the power demand and billing for EV recharging.

The companies believe electric vehicles are about to see a “big boom”, with the increasingly renewable electricity supplies in the US making the technology potentially a greener alternative for personal transport.

Major motor manufacturers are now gearing up to produce electrified vehicles in large numbers, with cars including the Nissan LEAF, Chevy Volt and Ford Focus Electric expected to emerge from the end of 2010.

Siemens Energy, Inc., believes the smart grid market will be worth $36 billion over the next four years, and said its partnership with Coulomb was “well positioned” to provide a solution for the electric vehicle market.

Accelerate

Paul A Camuti, president of USA Smart Grid Applications at Siemens Energy, Inc., said Coulomb’s networked recharging system, called the ChargePoint Network, along with its own smart grid technologies, would help to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.

He said: “Electric vehicle infrastructure, within the Smart Grid, is a critical enabling technology that will allow electrical vehicle technology to reach its full potential from both a societal and economic perspective.”

Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb Technologies said: “The Siemens Meter Data Management Solutions and the ability to integrate EVSE solutions into the customer’s IT platforms leverages our advanced communication and networking software to deliver a higher level value proposition to our common customer base.”