In September 2022, a 10-day heat wave saw California's power grid reach an all-time high of more than 52,000 megawatts, nearly knocking the electric grid offline. That could be extremely useful in California, which has seen nearly 100 substantial outages in the last five years, more than any other state except Texas. With its 98-kWh battery, an F-150 Lightning can keep the power on for up to three days. Not to charge the truck, but to power the cabin.' 'This guy is driving up to the mountains and plugs his truck into a cabin. 'There was a commercial for the Ford F-150 truck,' recalls Skinner, a California state senator who represents San Francisco's East Bay.
It was a football game on TV that sparked Nancy Skinner's interest in bidirectional charging, an emerging technology that allows an EV's battery to not just soak up energy but to discharge it, too - to a home, to other cars or even back to the utility grid.
