G.M.

On Tuesday, General Motors and its OnStar division announced they would partner with Pecan Street Incorporated to conduct a smart-grid demonstration project in Mueller, a master-planned community roughly three miles from downtown Austin, Tex. The Chevrolet Volt will play a key role.

The project, supported b a $10. 4 million grant from the Energy Department and more than $14 million in matching funds from project partners, is intended to test an integrated clean-energy smart grid in a 700-acre urban neighborhood developed on the site of a shuttered airport. Although Pecan Street is at the helm of the test operation, it also includes researchers from the University of Texas, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles will play an integral role in the demonstration. "Electric vehicles represent a significant addition to a home's energy profile, and understanding that impact and how consumers use and charge their vehicles is critically important," Brewster McCracken, executive director of Pecan Street, said in a media release.

Kara Colt, a spokeswoman for G.M., wrote in an e-mail that 60 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are in use within the test community of 600 homes. Of those vehicles, 55 are Chevrolet Volts, comprising what G.M. calls the greatest concentration of Volts in the world. Ms. Colt added that in addition to the $7,500 federal tax credit extended to buyers of certain plug-in hybrid and purely electric vehicles, Mueller residents received a $7,500 rebate from Pecan Street on their Volt purchases. Those leasing a Volt for three or more years, meanwhile, received a $3,000 rebate.

The demonstration has many components, including smart appliances used in conjunction with home-management systems and smart electric meters; energy storage technologies that optimize the use of solar power; clean energy distribution; and green building construction. For G.M. and OnStar, determining how those technologies interact with and support electric-vehicle charging is of particular interest.

"The partnership provides us with a unique opportunity to observe charging details with many real customers in a concentrated setting," Nick Pudar, an OnStar executive, said in the media release. "We're gathering information from families' vehicles throughout this community to find out the direct impact the Volt has on the grid and how to get drivers the lowest-possible charging rate.

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