For all the talk of innovation in the electricity sector, there's precious little of it, at least the kind that resonates with ordinary people as something concrete they could actually use without a hassle. But David Crane at NRG Energy may have something.
One of NRG's plans, Crane said at a Credit Suisse energy conference Thursday, is to sell monthly contracts, like cell phone contracts, to customers of its Reliant Energy utility, for charging electric vehicles.
NRG is well-known to us as a power generator, rooted in the fossil-fueled steel-in-the-ground business. But it's more than that, and Crane signaled that it is looking to other aspects of the business for growth.
Coal plants will have to be retired if the Environmental Protection Agency issues all the traditional-pollutant control rules on the drawing boards, Crane said in our correspondent Ethan Howland's report. Renewables is the only certain high-growth area in the power business, he said, and NRG aims to push hard on it. And he sees EVs as a major business opportunity in the longer term.
It will have to be in the longer term, since EVs have lots of hurdles on the way to claiming a big share of the market. But Crane said he sees five EV "ecosystems" developing in densely populated areas of California, Florida, the Midwest, the Northeast and Texas. And the prospect of an easy, familiar way to pay for charging could put some zip in the average person's outlook on the matter.
At its Reliant utility in Texas, where there are 1.5 million electric customers, the company expects to offer fixed-price, 15,000-mile contracts. On average, Crane said, customers would pay $80 to $100 a month to charge their cars, compared with paying about $120 a month for gasoline. The deal would work like a minutes contract for cell phones. Cool.
Still, it will only be electricity. It's hard to imagine what extra features could be involved to make it competitive on anything but price. But we are promised bells and whistles by smart grid visionaries, so maybe anything is possible.
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