For years, the energy industry was long on vision but short on details about exactly how electric vehicles (EV) would interact with the grid to become an energy source.
The technical challenges were huge, not to mention the awkwardness of two industries working together that speak separate languages and operate under different rules. Auto manufacturing survives on tight profit margins in a fiercely competitive industry. Electric utilities are monopolistic, slow-moving, and accustomed to rate guarantees.
A new breed of software-oriented companies is figuring out how to bring the two industries together to leverage EV charging, and do so in a consumer-friendly way that bolsters the grid and saves drivers money on their charging. I recently had the opportunity to talk to one of these companies, WeaveGrid, fresh off announcing a deal with Toyota Motor North America.
So how does it all work? And what does it mean to the utility, the auto manufacturers and the EV owner?
Utilities are entering the EV world at different stages, some just starting, others well on their way. So WeaveGrid offers them crawl-walk-run options, said Yakov Berenshteyn, the director of automotive and charging partnerships for the San Francisco, Calif.-based company.
Who’s where?
One of the first problems utilities face is knowing where EVs routinely charge. Home chargers are particularly hard to identify. So, in the crawl stage, WeaveGrid locates where clusters exist. Next, a utility might offer time-of-use rates or incentives to nudge drivers to charge when the grid isn’t under strain and power tends to be cheaper.
Then comes the leap into utility-managed charging, where the utility shifts the time or power of charging with the driver’s permission.
To accomplish this, the WeaveGrid platform collects a range of data, such as electricity price signals, system constraints, or other grid characteristics, ingests the data and then produces a charging schedule tailored for any given vehicle or charger.
Berenshteyn said the idea is to devise a schedule “that is good for the utility and for the driver.”
EVs rather than power plants
To understand the driver’s behavior, WeaveGrid has developed a way to communicate directly with the vehicle. “We actually read the data from the devices. How is the vehicle charging and how often and when is it charging?” he said.
When this information is combined with knowledge of where the charging occurs on the distribution system, “you get this nice consolidated picture that utilities can actually use for forecasting for active load management,” he said.
Some utilities may then use the information to defer capital expenditures by deploying the “digital element of the infrastructure instead of just outlaying physical capex,” he said. In other words, instead of building new poles, wires or power plants, they may rely on virtual power provided by the electric vehicles.
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At this time WeaveGrid focuses on residential EVs, because fleets are easier for utilities to identify, given that building a charging depot often requires planning and interconnection discussions with the utility.
“So the utility gets two years’ notice, or so, that a big charging depot is going in,” he said. “A utility gets close to zero notice that someone has just purchased a giant Tesla Cybertruck and is now charging it on the same cul-de-sac that has four other EVs.”
Planning for now and later
WeaveGrid serves as a partner and advisor to automakers and energy charging companies. But its core customers are utilities, including several well-known names, such as Exelon, PG&E and Xcel Energy. Some utilities use the information gathered for real-time operations; others for planning.
Through a program with Xcel Energy in Colorado, WeaveGrid collects day-ahead price signals for overnight wind power, ingests the data into its model, and based on the output, delivers charging schedules to vehicle owners the next evening. The goal, Berenshteyn said, is to get drivers to charge with “incrementally free and carbon-free overnight wind power.”
WeaveGrid generally tries to avoid real-time actions that lead to load-shedding.
‘’Hey, we’re cutting off your charging right now,’ is not a great driver experience,” Berenshteyn said.
However, the company does engage in what he described as resilience programs that require immediate action by the driver. For example, when a utility is about to shut off power because of a wildfire threat, the platform will warn participating drivers that they should pre-charge.
Customer consent and participation
Drivers are not automatically enrolled in the WeaveGrid programs; they must consent. To encourage participation, utilities typically offer financial incentives.
“This is the driver providing their assets, their vehicle as a load resource. They should be compensated and incentivized to do so,” Berenshteyn said.
Inducements vary by utility, but many offer upfront incentives to encourage signups, along with participation-based performance incentives. EV drivers learn about the program through utility and manufacturer campaigns.
Once they’re participating, drivers can ‘set and forget’ their charging schedule — a commonly chosen choice — granting the utility permission to read their usage data and optimize their charging schedules.
“Others are a little bit more in the weeds and want to see how things are going,” he said. A personal dashboard offers this group “nitty-gritty details,” such as how much money they save by using an EV instead of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle.
Real change from real-time optimization
How likely is it that the driver will change their behavior as a result of the information WeaveGrid provides?
“It’s just going to depend on the utility program. If it’s mostly designed around a static time of use rate, then, it’s not going to change much,” he said.
But when the platform is used for real-time optimization on the distribution network, it’s another story.
“In those cases you will get more nuanced charge schedules,” he said.
That’s because residential charging generally takes place from early evening until wakeup time, creating 10 hours of flexibility where real-time optimization can consider finer influences, even an asset as small as the local transformer on your cul-de-sac, he said.
A lot of work ahead
Berenshteyn said that even as the six-year-old company’s platform has evolved, its “north star” has remained the same, which is to solve the problem of the utility’s “last mile,” the low voltage system leading to the customer where many distributed energy resources, including EVs, operate.
“This wave of EV adoption is coming and can be a great long-term benefit to the utilities and to ratepayers across the board, but only if it can be managed in a software-optimized way,” said Berenshteyn.
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