Imagine 100,000 capacitors at-the-ready to balance load on some hot Texas afternoon, when just a few short years before, in the early 2000s, operations engineers in Austin might have been contemplated system curtailments. Not so far-fetched, it seems.

In Austin Energy's world, the municipal utility is already working toward that energy future. Andres Carvallo, the company CIO, described the early stages of this plugged-in future to the Knowledge 2007 forum for utility executives. While Building the Smart Grid, as his piece of an industry forum was called, described the vital pieces of smart meters, home-area networks, open standards and the like, Austin Energy sees electric generation-surface transportation interface as truly unique.

There's something for everbody. On the electric generation side, idle capacity that HAS to be there for the 10 highest-demand days of the year would then bring in revenue during the overnight recharging of batteries. Consumers taking advantage of lower time-of-use rates during that recharging period cut their gas consumption, perhaps at an attractive price. Those same consumers would drive in the morning and plug in their cars at their place of work to provide energy back onto the grid, balancing load during some critical hours. Green power advocates reduce their carbon footprint. And geopolitically, the U.S. becomes less dependent on oil imported from hostile regions and countries.

And this is set to become a reality as Austin's grid is expected to be enabled  for this technology in 2009, and the automotive manufacturers will be ready to mass-produce these models by 2010. Austin Energy is testing the concept. Stay tuned. Or, in this case, plugged in.