Will Electric Vehicles Crash The Grid?

[Music] foreign [Music] if you've been following the electric vehicle scene over the past few years I'm sure you've heard things like EVS will crash the grid and if we really want to transition to electric vehicles we have to start building dozens and dozens and dozens of new coal-powered power plants they're going to offset the environmental benefits that the cars have in the first place so why bother doing this and then my favorite if a hundred million EVS plug in tonight all of our power is going to go out that's not exactly how it's going to work but let's put that to the side for a moment recently California signed into law legislation that's going to ban the sale of combustion engine Vehicles Beyond 2035. and that led political commentator Tucker Carlson to say electric vehicles are just a new way to overburden California's already collapsing electricity grid now on the other side there has been articles written that explain how we can do it one particular article that I like is from Scientific American and that's called why electric vehicles won't break the grid so that got me thinking and I did some research and I figured the best place to look are at the people that are actually in charge of providing our power distribution and electric vehicle infrastructure so I reached out to a couple utilities here in the U.S some large utilities and I found some people that are actually working on The Cutting Edge of electric vehicle infrastructure and making sure that their utility has enough power to handle this transition to electric vehicles I got them both to come on and do a recorded interview with me first up we're going to talk to Eric Cahill Eric is the senior strategic business planner for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California so he's really right at Ground Zero of this electric vehicle Revolution as California has more electric vehicles in that state than any other state in the country by far so we're going to hear what Eric has to say about this first and I'm going to hit him with the tough questions can we handle this what do we have to do to be prepared and is the timeline that California setting realistic but first don't forget if this is your first time here at state of charge please click that subscribe button and ring the notification Bell so you don't miss any upcoming electric vehicle news and reviews so I'm here today with Eric Cahill Eric is the senior strategic business planner for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District affectionately called SMUD we're going to talk to Eric today about EVs and the grid and this one should be interesting because Eric's out in California and we know California is pushing to eliminate internal combustion engines to actually instituted a a band recently on sales past 2035 and uh you know California isn't known for having the most stable grid so we're going to talk to Eric about this but before we do that Eric why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do over at SMUD sure thanks Tom I'm really uh pleasure to be here and good to see you again uh so I'm as you put at the senior strategic business planner here that's mud essentially on the electric transportation subject matter expert uh contending with our strategy our corporate strategy as well as our policy our public policy around electric transportation so I I do guide strategy I help us develop and execute strategy and and I also help you know design and and develop new rate structures and programs to meet the needs of our electric customers electric transportation customers okay so you know with that said a California's been in the news a lot with electric vehicles they've been a leader for electric vehicles for forever you know if it wasn't California back you know 20 years ago really pushing for alternative fuel vehicles we probably wouldn't be where we are today Eric I think that's that's an established fact but now they've taken it to the next level with saying they're going to ban combustion engine sales starting 2035 that is 12 years from now that's really amazing soon yeah and then at the same time I think it was the same week that they announced this uh it was in all the news that cat you know you California asked uh their electric vehicle owners not to charge their EVS because there you know it was in the the grid was struggling they were having rolling blackouts brownouts so you know the the general perception is California's nuts they can't even provide enough electricity now how are they going to do this when we replace gas with electric as a fuel so you let's just start right there I would imagine you're into intimately aware of how this is going to work how is it going to work how's it going to work well it has to work right and that's essentially the utilities here in California and in any state you know we're required you know it is our mission our Charter to provide electricity at a high high very high reliability to the point where right we have the most reliable electricity infrastructure across you know of any industrial uh industrialized Nation I think the message that was sent was Ill communicated to to borrow a Beastie Boys phrase I guess there but you know I just want to First say that's not what's happening you know we're not going to be asking our customers uh you know to to not charge their cars um utility I'm sorry we didn't that that notice was put out by the uh the Cal ISO which is the central Authority that balances all of the different grids by each of the major and even minor utilities across our state and what you what you have to recognize right is this is a completely new technology everyone is coming up the learning curve on this the each individual utility and there's a couple different types there's investor owns and there's a publicly owned and Municipal uh utilities but you also have these balancing authorities as well and all of the other Regulatory Agencies you know people might be familiar with ferc on the national stage for energy regulation here in California we have the energy commission we have the California Public Utilities Commission and several others and let me tell you anyone who you know knows a little about government you know there's not always the seamless communication and sharing of how we're going to message things across each of these boundaries and so I would say that the way it was messaged definitely sent mixed messages to the customer you know in a sense us utilities are saying yeah we're ready bring on the EVS we're here to support our customers and if you want EVS we're going to bring you the power to do it to enable you to do that that but at the same time you've got another Authority basically here saying whoa everybody stop stop charging you know because we're about to go into you know some kind of major service Interruption if we don't so that clearly needs to be better coordinated because that's not the message that we want to send you know let's be clear no one is forcing anyone to not charge their EV that decision will always be left to the customer so that's uh you know you know I guess I could the utilities message have been better absolutely and I think that's just one of those things we need to do to improve going forward so so when you say the message basically what they were asking was uh and and correctly if I'm wrong things that maybe aren't necessary for you to do right now maybe don't do like you know and since electric vehicle charging does take a lot of power um they were asking customers to maybe not charge between five and nine o'clock I think during that stressful period and and if that is correct um will that just continue will will there be that messaging you know will we be able to charge our cars during Prime hours in the future well like I said no one will say be in a position where they are not allowed to charge their car if they need to charge their car all that was done in this state was basically putting out an an alert to everyone to say if you don't have to charge please don't please wait if you can wait please wait until all this peak period passes and now the grid is in a better place to support it but that doesn't mean and that's by and large so maybe if there's you know uh to say I don't know a million people out there who are about to plug in and say you know because they have to and let's say you know just a small percentage of them say you know what I I can wait I don't need it right now and they do that that's all we that's all that's needed uh frankly to avert some cascading issues with the greater interruptions with the grid that affect everybody and in fact we saw that reaction for all energy use across the state and we did avert major rolling blackouts okay so what what what are some of the biggest challenges that the state is going to face as we ramp up this transition to electric vehicles what are some of the things you have to do yeah yeah um you know aside from you know where let's first I want to say it with SMUD you know we we brought in a new CEO um a couple of years ago and he set for us a very uh aggressive Target to achieve absolute zero carbon in our energy Generation by the end of this decade so you know you talk about 2035 for Banning combustion Vehicles this is by 2030 our power will essentially be zero carbon our power generation will be zero carbon so um to do that we have a lot of things that we've got to do and a lot of challenges in front of us so you know aside from decommissioning say our remaining fossil fuel power plants mostly natural gas power plants the ability to store energy for times of high demand when energy is most expensive will be critical and this is a this is a new technology right and so some people may be familiar with this I know many of you say Evie listeners are very familiar if many of them have home energy storage capability you know they have batteries basically big batteries that you know maybe they've bought from Tesla maybe somebody else and it essentially can power their home it can charge their car it can power their home it could send um you know electricity back to the grid and that's what we are looking to enable more of think about this for a second you know we as a utility yes to bring up more power to to charge millions of vehicles right you'd think that we'd have to build all kinds of new power plants to deliver that capacity well it turns out we don't need to and EVS are the main reason because of that and the main reason for that is because essentially it's a giant battery on Wheels and so as you as a utility we see this as a huge asset that the customer is bringing to us out of their own pocket they're buying their car just as they always have so that means we don't have to procure that energy storage that means they can now offer a service to us and we as a utility are willing to reward them for that so if you're willing to share that energy with us for example you've charged your car up but you're not going to use it for the next six hours and you want to make that electricity that energy available for utilities to to bring on the grid during times when we need it when everybody at large needs it then we can make that worth your while and you know we're already doing that with EV rates and you know special EV rates and discounts and it's it's pricing mechanisms you talked earlier too about what can we do to get people to not charge between certain periods when everybody's on it well it's it's it's the market it's just Market forces we're going to use pricing to do that so we're going to make your energy really cheap in times off peak you know but on Peak you're going to be expected to pay more and that will help modify people's behavior and get them to more align their behavior with the needs of of everyone themselves including yeah and I've I've heard just what you said from many people that work in the utility industry I remember God this must have been 12 or 13 years ago and EVS were very early on Eric and I posed that question I was wondering you know are we going to be able to do this I can imagine how much more electricity we're going to have to generate in the country and you know so forth and so on and the person just smiled and said you you're not looking at this clearly and I understand it because you're not in the industry and he told me this and I never forgot he said EVS are actually going to be the solution to grid stability not a problem and I I couldn't get my mind around it at first and he talked about this two-way power flow and it all sounds like so futuristic and down the road but I mean I'm standing I'm sitting here in my garage I'm right next to me here is a bi-directional home charging station that can you know to accept power from my lightning as well as charge the lightning so I can have a two-way power flow already here in my garage and I have a solar array and soon I'm going to have stationary energy storage in my basement so I'm going to have the stationary energy storage in the house and this giant battery in my F-150 Lightning with equipment that can go you know accept power as well as take it so we're getting we're already getting there but you know I think people are concerned about the timeline um you know talking about the timeline you know we're at I think California what are we at close to 20 percent sales on new vehicles or electrons the latest figure I saw we we kind of spiked around the July time frame at around 22 percent wow which was pretty amazing and even here in Sacramento where we tend to have a a smaller percentage of new car buyers we have more used car buyers we were right there and we usually lag that we were right there with them you know like within a half a percentage that that's amazing it's way ahead of the country the country's at I think eight or nine nine percent at this point somewhere around there at average so let's let's just throw out seven years from now at 2030. um what if EV sales really continue to just climb and we're at 50 plus EV new car sales by 2030. can your utility district can it handle it will you be ready with this bi-directional power flow with asking customers not to charge um my big question really is is Eevee adoption gonna going to happen faster than you can react that's a great question and an interesting way to frame it right the fact that we're at 20 22 has certainly send send uh alarm Bells off right um about wait maybe this is going to happen faster than we thought and to be frank we have been predicting uh more and more uptake for some time and it took a little bit for and really with this with these gas prices and the way oil price you know Global oil prices have have gone berserk here lately that has really I pardon the pun kind of poured gasoline onto the you know onto the adoption here and the interest in EVs and so that has now kind of doubled down that that concern uh here at utilities of like wow we thought maybe we were going to have 10 or 15 years it may be that we only have you know eight to ten years but regardless it's not something that's going to happen tomorrow it's not something that's even going to happen you know a month from now or a year from now that all of a sudden we're going to have 50 uptake the reality is that this is going to be a gradual and evolutionary transition some would call it an orderly transition but what you just that's why we want to see we want to see an orderly transition right it's only 12 years though till that end it is but like you said the EVS are part are basically the solution that's coming with the challenge with the problem and what we have the challenge really for us is to is to figure out and work out all the technological stuff you know the engineering stuff that needs to happen to make sure that you can share your electricity with us and we can get you the electricity you need when you need it for not just your car but your whole house the whole neighborhood your whole Community Etc so we have time and our r d teams are working you know around the clock basically we already have launched pilot programs that are experimenting with vehicle to grid Technologies we're working with school districts for example because school buses turn out to be a perfect you know test bed to try this out with and these are the kind of technologies that we intend to learn how to standardize you know all of the processes that need to happen for customers to be able to say hey I just bought this can you you know make this happen for me and we can say yep just enter this information and we'll turn that on for you so that's going to take some time right we're also doing this I mentioned the school bus program right we also have this on the residential side many of you are familiar of course with the Ford F-150 Lightning and the you know some of the promises that have been made there about being able to charge up and use your battery to go off grid and support your your home should there be a power interruption or for whatever reason or even if you're just out camping and you just want to power your campsite or whatever or power tools that you're using at your work site so we're also you know partnering with the oems and we're partnering with several other Innovative companies to help make all of these Solutions happen and it is you pointed it out the fact that you have this stuff at home already you have a lot of this equipment at home already and it's it's it's actually a fascinating time right it's amazing time we're going through now in in the transportation Arena where the internet was back in the mid 90s right and you talk about the disruption that that happened then for computers and and of course then the iPhone and what that did for smartphones and even computers then too this this whole development is doing the same for the transportation the automotive industry and the utility industry because never before have we as a utility been asked to be a you know a transmission fuel provider in the same way that say shell or a Chevron or an Exxon or whatever it might be so um yeah that's 100 correct but you do provide Power and it almost you know doesn't matter what the power is for you need to provide Power meet demand at certain times one of the questions I have for you now is and this is this is really important in order to get to that hundred percent uh you know new sales of of electric vehicles and really ban ice the California has to address the problem of people charging in apartments yes it's not fair if you tell somebody they can't buy a gas car you have to buy an EV but but now it's incredibly uh difficult for them to charge it because they live in apartments they can't charge or condo associations where they can't charge so now you're making it very difficult and some of these people are most are the most economically disadvantaged people to begin with and now you're making their life even harder so I know this isn't your problem to solve but how do we help people in apartments charging is it right to charge legislation is it charging ready laws what do we do to make EVS easier for people that live in apartments yeah a great question and and definitely top of mind for us you know as a utility we are part of our mandate part of our charge is to ensure that everybody has equal access to electricity uh into the energy they need um so the fact that this technology is one that is difficult for people just inherently difficult for people to access in what we call multi-unit dwellings right or multi-family housing is is a challenge for us right uh right now there isn't say another or better solution and and we want to see people take up electric vehicles for the reasons that we have already talked about right so it's top of mind for us again we're one of the big things that we're doing uh to rise to this challenge because we as a utility can't do it alone and you already pointed that out right you know it's cut some of this stuff is out of our control but we're partnering with other entities both in the public sector as well as the private sector to see how we can solve this problem um I think the very the probably the first and and best thing that we can do and we're already very much engaged in doing at most if not all the utilities here in California are we have building codes um you know we call Cal green which are which are building codes that are designed to set uh targets for uh the the building industry and one of the big uh iterations that we just went through this but big cycles that we just went through was looking at the the basically the next generation of what's going to be required for new homes and new structures as well as for existing facilities and what what we might do to retrofit what are going to be the requirements so the best thing that we could possibly do right now is to ensure that any new construction any new multi family or multi-unit Construction is already equipped is already wired to to accommodate charging and you know this is maybe me speaking for myself based at what a based on what you know we've learned um we really believe that dedicated spaces we've got to provide charging for dedicated spaces at these at these facilities but we also have to recognize that not all of these facilities have the parking lots or the parking availability for dedicated spaces so we also have to bring the capacity to serve those who can't really charge overnight because they don't park their car at a parking lot or in a garage overnight they may park at curbside for example so we're partnering with the city we're partnering with uh with other private entities as well including electric vehicle service providers to try to bring these these solutions that curbside charging solutions to help address those customers and it's not just overnight right people are used to the gas station model so if everyone I imagine all your listeners are familiar with Tesla Supercharger stations right which are super fast chargers right we're also exploring creating a network of chargers that essentially delivers that same kind of solution and is located in multi centers of gravity where there's a lot of multi-family housing because that's where a lot of renters live and they're going to need that for various reasons they may not have the approval or authority from their landlord to be able to get it or you know the building just can't really accommodate it without great expense so we want to be able to provide them access to that fast charging and to do it at prices that are equivalent to what folks in single-family homes in Suburbia are are paying I'm glad you brought that up let me interject because what happens is some of the people that live in these multi-family drawings as I said earlier are some of the most economically disadvantaged people and uh they have to charge at public DC fast charges which end up being two to three times as expensive as charging at home so now you've got people that can least afford to pay more for the electric are forced to pay more because they they're penalized for not charging at home and I know one of the big problems with DC fast Chargers and I've talked to representatives from all the DC fast charge infrastructure companies out there our demand charges and they're so high sometimes they make selling the electricity from a DC fast charger they that's why it's so expensive because they can pay sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a month in demand charges for one big site that has a lot of high power stations what is mud doing to help alleviate that the Mantra isma doing anything to help do to alleviate those high demand charges the answer is yes we are doing things we're uh in fact the investor own utilities we're we're a publicly owned utility um so we're not regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission but rather by the energy commission and our own board basically but we are already we've already launched a pilot commercial EV rate that offers demand charge relief essentially and I could get into a little bit more details of what that looks like but suffice it to say that it basically avoids those massive charges especially when this is a new site uh you don't yet have all the vehicles it's an new charging site and you don't yet have all the vehicles on the road taking advantage of it so utilization or use of those Chargers is low and that's where it gets expensive because we have to Big we have to build a bigger pipe if you will to have more electrons flow to serve you know say the full build out of that station say there's 20 you know Chargers there fast Chargers there so we don't want to penalize the new entrance the the early adopter companies for example that are introducing those you know those stations and while it's still say early on in the market and you don't have the kind of throughput and traffic there using those Chargers as as they know they're going to have as more and more of these EVS are taken up by the population gotcha well listen um we're getting up against it here uh I want to thank you for coming on I think your answers were very insightful but you're not through I have one more final question so we we play it on you explained a lot but you know now I'm just going to hit you with you you've pretty much answered it during the interview but the final thing is you know is are the grids gonna collapse in California if if if if by 2030 by 2035 um you know I know you said no but are you certain that we're not heading towards disaster that we're going to be able to handle this rollout this is a solvable problem that's that's the bottom line it is solvable we're already working on it we've already solved several things and we'll continue to hit more and more challenges and overcome those every utility out there is doing the same thing every utility has always had their challenge with regard to assuring uninterrupted stable power you know 24 7 365 days a year and it's it's not unique to California we've seen it New York Texas and nameless other states right so we got to get there we will get there and it's we're doing the same things any startup company has done like let's CEO Tesla or rivian or Lucid or anybody else right to be successful we have to try and we have to fail and we have to learn and then we have to try again with being smarter from what we learned in our past trials so that's what we're doing right now and we're seeing a lot of success we are very positive I think we're very bullish that we're going to be able to bring these Technologies to people and and do it in a way that's not just going to benefit us as a utility but it's going to benefit all customers and ultimately lower everybody's cost of electricity all right Eric Cahill thanks for coming on I appreciate it we'll uh maybe touch base with you at some point in the future uh maybe a few years down the road to check up on the progress and uh hopefully you'll be you'll still be on course and we won't be uh reading about crazy California brownouts and blackouts in the news anymore I know it's going to happen from time to time but um hopefully this influx of EVS isn't going to create more problems it's going to be as we discussed earlier actually a solution to the problems thanks for coming on you bet Tom always a pleasure thank you thanks again for coming on Eric that was very informative next up we're going to speak with John Markowitz John is a senior director and head of e-mobility for the New York Power Authority and John's been on The Cutting Edge of installing electric vehicle infrastructure throughout the state let's see what John has to say so we're here today with John Markowitz New York power authorities senior director of e-mobility John thanks for coming on thanks a lot Tom thanks for having me so could you tell the audience a little bit about your position and what you do for New York Power Authority sure I lead up our e-mobility group there's two primary components to the program we have uh one is the Evolve New York DC fast charging Network that we own and operate and basically that was driven by the state had a very aggressive climate a climate change law and we looked at it and said well you know transportation is the biggest sector of carbon emissions in the state and when you looked at driving an EV if it was not a Tesla across the state it was pretty much impossible back when we asked for the funding to get the program going and there were these DC fast charging deserts and it just wasn't realistic to to buy an EV especially in Upstate New York so we built out that like backbone of DC fast charging so make uh EV ownership possible the other half of the program is uh engineering procurement and construction that we do on behalf of state and local governments that are interested in EV charging whether it's level two for public charging or workplace charging all the way up to DC fast charging and the big projects we're working on most recently are Transit bus charging so they're basically DC fast Chargers like you'd see on the side of the highway but they're overnight charging for something as big as a Transit bus very good and I can I can attest to the fact that New York previously was a DC fast charging desert I live in New Jersey and I have relatives that live up in Vermont so I had to take the Thruway all the way up to Vermont and in previous years it was very difficult but now you know I've used your network now quite a few times just a couple months ago I took a 1200 mile road trip with my lightning up into Canada where I drove all through Upstate New York to uh Wellesley Island and and that area up there and I use the network a few times and it worked really well so thank thanks for building that out so um as you know what we're here to talk about today there's a lot of misinformation a lot of uh talk about how we could never transition to electric vehicles we we're not ready for it the grid can't handle it you know we we hear this all the time that you know this is unrealistic goals maybe in 50 or 60 years we'll be able to do this but some states are saying within the next 10 15 years we're going to ban internal combustion and this can never happen it's impossible you know it's it's it's Folly so um I I want to talk to you a little bit about that and and New York's you know efforts to you know make it not Folly and is this unrealistic can we transition our Fleet to electric vehicles sometime in the next say 15 years is is that possible it's it's completely possible in New York we're planning for it New York's one of those States uh where we have legislation where you know 2035 uh new gas vehicles aren't going to be available for sale right so we're transitioning over to EV um so the folks who are operating the electric grid whether it's the utilities at the local level all the way up to the wholesale level which is the New York ISO is the group that runs the wholesale market for electricity all those folks are doing the modeling for what does full EV adoption look like you know how does that affect the Grid's operations um so it's it's all being planned for and you know when you look at it there's really two different parts of it right there's an energy issue and a power issue right and I think you know your viewers are familiar with the difference right but a lot of the the more hysterical talk you hear about like oevs are going to break the grid are from folks who don't know the distinction between energy and power right so you know when you look at the energy required for like in the entire you know Fleet of vehicles in the state so about 9 million like Duty Vehicles right if they're all electric you're talking about 25 more energy right and that's 25 30 years out what before like all the vehicles are because even if all your vehicle sales are electric in 2035 right it still means there's gas cars on the road right cars are on the road like about 12 years before they get retired um so you're not going to get to the 100 number until closer to 2050 most likely right um but even at that 100 number it's only 25 30 percent more energy than we're producing now so that's completely uh something you could plan for and build for right the bigger issue is power right it's like well if every one of those nine million Vehicles all gets plugged in at 6 PM right then maybe there's a problem right and even that you could plan for and there's some natural diversity of load right like some people are going to be working the night shift they're not going to plug their car in at midnight because they're at work right um so and then there's smart charging is the other part of it to help solve that problem and then there are going to be some grid upgrades as well so but it's all long time Horizon stuff and it's all what utilities are used to doing right is upgrading Transformers putting out new wire you know running new programs for things like smart charging exactly and you could also incentivize people to charge during the hours where the grid has Excess power right I mean you could say exactly if you charge during these hours you get 30 discount 50 discount we've seen that there's there's time of use plans in place all over the country currently so um yeah and that and and that works we've we've seen that that works if if you give people uh less expensive electricity to charge their car they do it I mean it would be like look go to a gas station after 10 o'clock at night and pay a dollar per gallon who wouldn't do that you know so exactly um and but I think that's hard for people to get their hands around if they haven't done that in the past you know a lot of people say I want to charge when I want to charge but um you know and you'll be able to you know but I think the smarter people will will say look if I'm going to save 33 of my annual fuel costs I'll set the car to start charging at midnight so um good point uh so let's talk about I mean you make it sound very easy oh sure we could just do this um what are some of the biggest challenges that you're going to face because there has to be challenges it's not just that simple as oh yeah no problem we'll you know 2030 will be able to have you know 20 percent more electric or whatever you know energy produced there's a ton of challenges it's just the challenges are all the things that are in the weeds that utility people talk about like okay if you're going to have a time a day rate like you just mentioned what's the hour it turns on what's the hour it turns off how big a discount can you afford to give the customer it's it's all that kind of in the weed stuff off and then for smart charging should it be one of those Wi-Fi enabled Chargers like you test on your channel and then the utility has the ability to like throttle that down on a really hot summer night that kind of thing should that be how you do the SMART charging or should it be through the vehicle telematics because the vehicle is going to be able to tell you what its state of charge is and on the current standard the charger doesn't know that right so you have to do some inference right so yeah it's all that in the weed stuff is where the challenges are I mean building out DC fast charging is way more challenging than we thought it was going to be when we got into it I mean that's the hard part right and it's not just the utility part of it it's every part of the food chain right so it's everything from acquiring the property right to cite these because you want a site that's attractive to a driver right it's right off the interstate it's got food and bathrooms that are almost 24 7. um and that space has to have enough parking where they can give up five spaces or or more um some grassy area for all the power equipment like all that's not trivial just finding that and finding the host that'll lock in for that then you have to do the utility upgrades to get to the site and that's a place where New York's ahead of the curve right there's only a few states that have Make Ready coverage right so when we say we want to build the fast charger here and we talk to the local utility there's a reimbursement for the trenching costs from wherever the Transformer is over to our equipment that's night and day different from what New York was just a few years ago so New York's planning for all this but yeah you're right I mean the challenges are all in the weeds of actually building it what about things like stationary energy storage uh more Renewables do we need to build more do you need to build more power plants or is it just being Smarter with how the energy is managed there's some of both right so you know the stationary storage at DC fast charging sites or at bus Depots is something we've looked at um it's hard to make it cost effective if you the only reason you're putting it in is Peak shaving the battery doesn't really pay for itself over its life if you can find other ways to monetize the value of that battery providing other services to the Grid it's it's possible it'll work one of the bigger challenges we've had on public fast charging sites uh with storage is just real estate like we're already struggling to find spots where we could have five uh parking spaces to put four dispensers right and like one space is marked a little wider for ADA compliance and then you know fairly large grassy area for all the Power Equipment that's a challenge now you're going to double that footprint with a you know decent sized battery so it's a bit challenging right so that's been a hard one um but uh you know there's there's workarounds for some of this right like what we've done in New York that's worked really well is is try to cite the fast charging around where there is grid power right so you find like a site that's um you know strip mall kind of site right off an interstate a lot of times There Is Power for those right so like we'll look and say all right we want to build something on exit 29 right and what the utilities in New York have all done is put up maps online of their distribution grid and how much hosting capacity there is for EV charging so we know okay we need roughly a megawatt of power right for our site we could look at the map and say all right on exit 29 it's only these two strip malls that have that and if we pick this third strip mall down the road like that's going to be a problem right because we're going to be drawing power a long ways and like the Make Ready money is capped per site so we might blow past the cap and it's going to be a very expensive site so we could do all that kind of scouting before we even call the utility so it's it's really a good landscape to be able to build all this but also the other question about the power plants um yeah eventually they'll have to be new power plants because you're increasing the amount of energy by 30 percent um but a lot of that's going to be renewable coming in and that's just because of this clcpa the climate legislation is basically mandating that the grid is is carbon neutral right by 2040. so all the new construction of plants are going to be renewable going forward just to be able to meet those targets and that's only going to help the transportation sector right because the grid is going to be that much more renewable than it is now okay that's that makes sense now you talked a little bit before about how difficult it was to find the real estate and uh you know I understand this intimately I've talked to a lot of companies like say electron America and others that are out there trying to actively get the foot in the door in different locations and you also mentioned that you know you use an example of four stations which what I've noticed seems to be typical of the uh the evolved New York Network that that you have out there and which the one that I used and that might be fine now but in only a couple of years four stations is not going to be okay per location uh you know I'm already starting to see these sites clog up whereas you know I've been driving EVS for 13 years as well as as you know I've known you for for a few years now I I used to be alone at the DC fast Chargers I could go in there and set up cameras and take pictures and so forth but now I'm rubbing elbows with people fighting to get a little spot you know every now and then waiting to to plug in are you planning for like actively saying okay in three in two years or three years we need to make this four location eight location eight eight stations are these sites easily expandable or do you have to retrench and rip everything out tell us a little bit about how are you future proofing these these networks yeah and we're seeing that queuing issue already so like holiday weekends around lunchtime because I think a lot of EV drivers come to this conclusion like well if I'm going to be stopping for 20 minutes we might as well plan it around lunch or dinner right um so we're seeing that especially the holiday weekends in the summer um so you know our standard is foresights uh or four dispensers per site we do future proof it so that some of the 150 kilowatt units are expandable up to 350 without any additional Plumbing uh underground right so it's already pre-wired for all that so at least that'll give us faster throughput when most of the cars are charging at like say 250 KW or something like that or 300 so that's one way we're future proofing the other one is just building more sites right so you know and you know hopefully the the car nav systems will be smart enough to be able to sell you um well hey the one at Exit 29 is full but there's some empty slots at Exit 30. um so that's part of it is just building out you know the where the fast Chargers are closer right to each other than they are now but we are building some bigger sites as well when we can so our JFK site at the cell phone lot has 10 DC fast Chargers and that's perfect because we're seeing the electrification of taxis and ride share fleets so that's perfect and that's a really busy site at the airport there but even some of our Interstate sites we're building out six and eight Port sites now so we're starting to see that as well okay well hopefully you can scale up as because you know I I really see this adoption rate taking off like they talk about the hockey stick curve and we might be at the very big base of where that takes off and it'll really hurt adduction if we can expand these locations to keep up with uh you know people being able to charge and now I know most people that have the ability to charge at home do it's less expensive it's more convenient there's a million reasons why you'd want to charge at home you have to use the DC fast charges when you're on a long road trip but some people can't charge it on they have in apartments and places that just don't provide home charging how do we help these people and it's I don't think the solution is just add more DC fast charges so they can drive 20 miles out and and fill up and then drive back to their house how do we how do we help people that live in apartments in New York get make it possible for them to buy an EV there's a couple of things you could do so in like say the outer Burrows where some of those apartment buildings have parking the state has incentives if the a building owner wants to put in level two for the tenants so that that's one solution right the other is urban DC fast charging and and we're building some of those as part of the state's downtown revitalization initiative and because they're Urban Lots they tend to be smaller like two fast Chargers but that's one other solution right is the DC fast charging but the one I find the most interesting is what New York City dot is doing they have targets to Electrify 40 percent of the parking spaces that they control so they they own a lot of Municipal parking lots and garages all through the city I think it's over 6 000 parking spaces so forty percent of six thousand spaces is quite a bit um and they're wiring all of that up for level two and DC fast charging depending on the locations right um so there you have you know charging that can serve both like uh commuters during the day and maybe apartment dwellers at night and have and level two and DC fast charging for like the taxi fleets or people who are just shopping or something so I think they're planning it you know wisely and also looking at things like curbside charging in certain neighborhoods as well so I think there is a solution for the apartment dwellers but it is way more challenging than the Suburban so we haven't talked at all about like vehicle to grid and we talked a little bit about smart charging but do you see vehicle to grid being part of the mix where you know perhaps the utilities when or if and when it comes to a crisis where there's possibly a brown out or there's going to be a problem where the utilities will pull energy from the batteries of the EVS provided the obviously the the owner will have opted into this program and will say okay you can you can draw some of my energy now do you see that as part of the future of EV charging and if so how far in the future because we're obviously not ready to do that right today but um do you think that might be part of the mix I think it is and I think it'll probably happen with fleets first and then the light duty Vehicles later um just because you know The Fleets are a known quantity right like they have a very um predictable use case um you know they you're already going to need to have Smart charging so utility is going to have some level of control right of of what the KW rate is of like say a row of buses at a bus depot um and you know they're also going to be closer to some Urban loads right so um I could see that scenario playing out a lot better and then putting in the proper uh protection equipment right because I think the utilities fear with v to G is the same as it is with solar right that it's going to export during an outage and Alignment is going to be working on something thinking it's not live and it's live um so you know all those standards will have to be in place but I mean you have the precedent of the solar industry right so all those V to G enabled charges will have the same smarts to be able to detect hey the Grid's down I'm not going to export unless the utility tells me to but I think all those technical standards need to be in place and then all the warranty stuff has to be in place on the vehicle side right because I think if you discharge too much right like you're wearing down the warranty of the battery but if you just have a lot of EVs and you're doing very shallow discharge it is really useful to the grid but yeah I think it's a few years out on the light duty and then much nearer term on on the fleet side yeah it's interesting that you pointed out the warranty because all the manufacturers are thinking about this now they're all taking slightly different approaches on what they're going to do Ford for instance as you can see behind me here I have the Ford charge station Pro for my lightning and while that's not vehicle to Grid it's vehicle to home where I could power my my house with it in the case of a power outage or at least a portion of my house it can deliver about 9.6 kW to the house which can power a lot of things oh yeah and Ford's taking the position that they are not letting it affect the warranty at all they're saying basically you could do whatever you want with this you could even use it for energy Arbitrage and and and and use this battery any way you want and you have 100 full warranty but they're obviously going to be monitoring this closely to see how often people do that but it's interesting that you brought up the point of the warranty that you're thinking on the manufacturer's side which I wouldn't have expected from you on the Utility side but that's good good insight and you know you have to think about it from The Fleets point of view right like if you know some of our biggest customers are Transit agencies right they're thinking very strongly about the warranty coverage on that battery it's a very expensive asset for them um so yeah I'm used to thinking of it that way but you know I think vehicle to home is such a different use case I think like the oems are probably thinking oh they're only going to use this like every you know three years right when you have an outage you'll power up your house and that'll be for like a day and a half and then you know I'm sure that's the modeling they're doing and if they find people are using these a lot like the warranties might end up changing I mean the way it is now if you live say in California you know the difference in electric rates between off-peak and on Peak I think it's the greatest difference in the country you know and you could charge your your lightning up all day all night and then let's say you're working from home have it plugged in and run your whole house on it all day and then pull and so you're never paying for on Peak electric but anyway I digress we're getting into the weeds here let's talk a little bit about demand charges and you know that they can be quite onerous on installing public uh infrastructure DC fast and even level two I mean I used to own and manage DC fast charger and a level 2 charging station I think I installed the first CCS DC fast charger in the state of New Jersey back in 2013 or 14 and it was a low powered one a 24 kilowatt one but I still was getting crushed with demand charges so much so almost no matter what I charged people to charge there I could never even break even so I provided my two charging stations as a public service it cost me like 500 a month to keep my two DC my DC fast charger with my level two station running but I did it because this is kind of what I do and I'm an EV Advocate um but you know if I'm looking at I as this as a business model and I want to install I own a big strip mall and I have you know 500 car parking lot and I said you know it's not a bad idea to put five or six of these or maybe 10 of these DC fast charges in my parking lot because I'll have customers they'll come in they'll patronize my tenants and all the stuff but then you look at the numbers I mean I know the the there's there's some subsidies when the installation you talk about this make ready money and so forth but I'm talking about the ongoing operating these these stations I with demand charges I don't see light I don't see how you can do it unless there's like 100 utilization is there any talk about working with the utilities to ease these demand charges there there is in New York there there is a pre-existing incentive that helps balance out the demand charge burden and then um there's a regulatory proceeding that's going on right now called demand charge Alternatives and that's going to be looking at what's the longer term solution so the the current solution is something called the per plug incentive and it's aimed just at public DC fast charging and basically if you're the owner of a DC fast charger there's an annual incentive that gets paid to you and it declines every year and it's a seven year program and it started in 2019. so um and the basic idea of that is in the early days your DC fast charge is going to be very lightly utilized but you're still going to get these big demand charges over like the weekends when everybody's visiting right so it's to take the pain away from those early years and and hope that after the seven year period your utilization is high enough that you could break even because that's the the whole key to making DC fast charge working is is just having really high utilization um so you're right it's it's a challenge but I think longer term there needs to be a better solution right because this is going to phase out and you're still going to have sites that are going to be utilization challenged forever right like you'll need certain DC fast charges on on interstates to get you to tourist destinations right and nobody will buy the EV if they can't get to that tourist destination where they have you know their summer vacation or whatever um but it's going to get this heavy seasonal use but it's going to pay demand charges all year so yeah it's it's definitely an issue and it's definitely something being looked at in New York and and hopefully there's a permanent solution to it but um yeah and you could imagine you know you're building you know our stations or 750 kilowatts if it's four units right and we usually put in a one megawatt Transformer so that we have some Headroom to Future proof it and that's just a four charger site and we're already seeing that scenario where you have four cars plugged in and they're all what I call the second generation cars right so things like ionic five that can pull down 200 KW so you have four of those visiting at the same time you know you're basically peaking the meter and paying a pretty hefty demand charge so yeah it's definitely something being looked at in New York and and it definitely needs a solution right so that DC fast charging becomes attractive to own and operate well that's that's encouraging that you already have something in play with that and you're you're considering that the funny thing is we're down to the last question now and my final question was was going to be what can New York do to to help EV adoption but after talking to you now for 25 minutes or so I see you're already doing a lot like New York seems to be ahead of the curve on this and and kudos to you for doing this I mean you probably sounds like you'd be the one spearheading the efforts being the senior director of immobility for New York Power Authority so I'm going to twist the question a little bit and I'm going to say should New York be encouraging EV adoption you know is should they be uh have a hand in on what we drive and I'd like to hear your answer on that uh yeah I think that we have to right I mean once you have this climate legislation that mandates these really deep cuts to carbon emissions um it has to be either EV or hydrogen right and I mean the all the momentum right is on the EV side with the oems at this point so I I think you have to promote it if you ever want to be able to meet all those ambitious targets and really try to take on the challenge right and I mean when people talk about you know the will the grid break with all these EVS it's it's almost like a diversion right I mean the things that are scary to the Grid or extreme weather events right it's the the crazy Heat Wave and the cold snap or the the tropical storm right I mean you've been through Sandy like I have right um those are the scary things right so to me it's like how could you not do this right how could you not try to solve this problem um and then you look at like the urban areas right like Transit bus electrification and school bus electrification I mean it's very exciting because these are the EVS that are going to be driving through our most populated areas right and you could have a bus depot with you know 200 buses in it and they're apartment buildings like right down the block right so you think about just the local air quality let alone besides for the carbon uh reductions there's all sorts of benefits to electrifying this so yeah I think the state has to be involved in in moving this kind of thing forward it's funny you talk about the air quality I remember during the early days of covid when we were in like complete shutdowns and nobody was going out remember how the air quality improved like everywhere it was it was you know because we didn't have all these uh you know combustion engines out there and you talk about the concentration of that air pollution typically is in you know communities that you know are already disadvantaged and then and they get the worse air quality so uh moving to electrification it would seems to solve a lot of problems even problems that I think a lot of people didn't think about but well that's it John I want to thank you for coming on this has been really enlightening uh I'm I'm really happy to hear all the things that you guys are doing over there in New York right over the border and I only really saw the the evolved New York DC fast charge Network and and how quickly you're expanding that which is kudos to you you're doing a great job on the I didn't realize you had so many other things going on and how you're really giving extreme thought to the planning and making this work because you know on the surface even though I'm an electric vehicle Advocate I've been involved with this for a while even I had some questions of is this going to work you know how you know what what if we we start doubling the amount of EVS on the road every year for the next seven or eight years will there get to be a point where we have to say whoa let's back off because we can't do this and it sounds like that's not the case it sounds like you guys are going to be able to handle it and uh thanks for coming on and explaining it to my followers I appreciate it thanks a lot for having me Tom take care and thanks again for coming on John that was also very informative well there you have it we spoke to two industry experts whose jobs are to make sure the lights continue to go on in your house and that there's enough power for electric vehicle infrastructure as we transition to a fully electric Fleet here in the country this wasn't a political pundit or some guy in the basement of his mom's house on some Forum saying oh EVS don't work these are the people you want to hear from the people who are actually tasked with providing power for electric vehicle infrastructure and they both said there is no problem there's going to be challenges but they're preparing for it and they'll be able to handle it we're going to have this transition to EVS without any major difficulty listen if this is your first time here at state of charge please don't forget click that subscribe button and ring the notification Bell so you don't miss any upcoming electric vehicle news and reviews and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: State Of Charge

Views: 27,635

Keywords: electric vehicles, electric vehicle, vehicle to grid, electric cars, electric car, renewable energy electric vehicles, electric, electric vehicle charging, electric grid, power grid, best electric vehicles, best electric vehicle, electric vehicle stocks, electric vehicle wireless charging, electric vehicle (industry), battery electric vehicle, electric vehicle charging time, electric vehicle smart charging, evs will crash the grid, electric vehicle crash grid

Id: KNnYYImey2k

Length: 62min 5sec (3725 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 01 2023