The secret to a better grid? Electric vehicles.

A coalition of utilities and energy companies—Eversource, National Grid, and Sunrun among them—launched a Massachusetts pilot for vehicle-to-grid technology on Thursday, per Grist. V2G lets EV owners send stored battery energy back to the grid during peak demand in exchange for compensation, and a growing number of EVs now have the hardware to do it. As electricity demand climbs from data centers, heat pumps, and more EVs coming online, utilities are struggling to balance supply with increasingly intermittent renewables. EV batteries offer the cheapest form of flexible grid storage available—a typical EV battery holds six times the storage capacity of a home backup unit.

Listen to this story

Hear this and more stories in a personalized audio briefing.

Open The Chonkerton