Get the latest tech news

Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts


When an earthquake rocked Taiwan, hundreds of Gogoro’s battery-swap stations automatically stopped drawing electricity to stabilize the grid.

According to numbers provided by the company, 590 Gogoro battery-swap locations (some of which have more than one swap station) stopped drawing electricity from the grid, lowering local demand by a total six megawatts—enough to power thousands of homes. Gogoro is not the only company working on battery-swapping for electric scooters (New York City recently launched a pilot program to give delivery drivers the option to charge this way), but it’s certainly one of the most successful. Luke estimates that only 10% of Gogoro batteries are actually on the road powering scooters at any given time, so the rest, sitting on the racks waiting for customers to pick up, become a valuable resource that can be utilized by the grid.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Hacker News

Read more on:

Photo of swap networks

swap networks

Photo of emergency blackouts

emergency blackouts