Earlier this week General Motors (GM) announced its big foray into the energy business with GM Energy, providing services meant to help consumer and commercial clients manage charging and energy storage. For GM CEO Mary Barra, the suite of products creates an ecosystem that not only helps customers but also America’s electrical grid.

“One of the things we want people to understand is not only is an electric vehicle your mode of transportation, how you get from point A to point B, but it can also be a power source,” Barra said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer. “And I think that's gonna be very important as we look and really strengthen the grid in whatever country we're doing work.”

“We have the battery technology to provide clean energy, energy storage, and also supplement the grid,” Barra said. “So we're really excited about the business opportunity based on the Ultium technology that we have.”

GM Energy will sell battery technology and energy management systems through its newly created Ultium Home and Ultium Commercial suite of products and services, which will integrate with its existing Ultimium Charge 360 charging network. On-site battery storage that Ultium Home and Ultium Commercial provide could allow the customers to create “microgrids” that work off the main electrical grid and provide electricity to utilities during times of heavy load, while offering customers more control over charging.

In addition, the upcoming Chevrolet Silverado EV pick up will be able to provide bidirectional charging, meaning it can send its own electric power to customers home or business when needed, and charge from the grid or on-site batteries only when it needs to do so.

“We see it being a significant growth opportunity for the company,” Barra said. “When you look at it being another reason people buy an electric vehicle, but also what we can do beyond the vehicle from an energy perspective.”