Jenkins Nissan

Nissan is working to enable LEAF electric vehicle (EV) owners to use the energy reserves of the cars' batteries to power homes during rolling blackouts. After the crisis in Japan, Nissan knows how blackouts can affect daily operations. According to Hideaki Watanabe, Global Head of Zero Emission Vehicles, Nissan, the LEAF battery stores a maximum of 24 kWh - enough energy to power a U.S. house for roughly a day.

Nissan's initiative bodes extremely well for LEAF drivers in Japan who are very eager to see the idea come to fruition.  Watanabe says, "Some people are saying that instead…

Current events quickly become distant memories given how fast 'breaking' stories emerge. There is some danger in this. For while the March 11 earthquake and tsunami seem to have been pushed into the shadows, the recovery effort is very much still a current event. It will take months and months; if not years; before things begin to resume some semblance of normalcy in Japan.

In seeing how ill-prepared the country was for such a high…