Your computer could soon control all your electric-car charging needs: technology giant Cisco pushed further into the smart grid market yesterday with a deal with San Francisco based electric vehicle charging specialist ECOtality.

Now users of ECOtality’s Blink electric charger can view and manage their battery charging with a stroke of a keyboard, using Cisco’s home energy controller (HEC) software.

The charger will communicate wirelessly to a user’s home computer — and vehicle owners can set parameters for when they want the car to charge. This is important because it will avoid EVs from over burdening the grid when it’s already at maximum usage (typically in the mornings and early afternoon). Utility companies are pushing EV owners to charge their cars at night when energy demand is low and prices are also usually lower (off-peak rates).

This will be especially useful in neighborhoods where there are several electric vehicles.

“The Blink interface communicates directly with utilities to determine off-peak and low-cost charging times, and allows consumers to maximise energy usage and reduce costs,” said ECOtality chief executive Jonathan Read to Business Green. “Together with Cisco, we are delivering a solution that empowers consumers to adopt renewable energy and promotes energy-efficient technology that supports the deployment of the smart grid.”

The Cisco-ECOtality partnership is the last in the list of similar partnerships that have occurred in the past few months reports Gigaom. General Electric has tied up with Juice Technology to link its home energy management systems and car charging stations, “Silver Spring Networks is working with ClipperCreek for its electric car charging play and has its own home energy management software. German engineering giant Siemens has a co-marketing deal with Coulomb Technologies to sell Siemens’ smart grid IT along with Coulomb’s charging station technology and battery swapping station startup Better Place has a partnership with GE.”

In fact, ECOtality is also working with Sprint to link its Blink stations.

The Cisco/Ecotality service will be rolled out as a part of Ecotality’s $230 million EV Project that will install about 15,000 public and residential electric car chargers, supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy.