Panel: Commercial vehicle fleets can boost EV charging in urban areas
Incentive programs and a level of flexibility will enable the nation’s utilities to fine-tune the expansion of the electrical grid to accommodate the rising tide of electric vehicles on the nation’s streets and highways.
Growing concerns about a potentially uneven expansion of rooftop solar power concentrated in higher-income communities has also raised the possibility that low-income neighborhoods could also be left with a dearth of charging infrastructure and make residents less likely to invest in a new-or-used EV in the coming years.
The solutions raised by the participants in a panel discussion organized by the United States Energy Association on Thursday pointed to continued participation by utilities in the planning process for infrastructure expansion. At the same time, continuing customer incentives can encourage EV adoption by homeowners and landlords, as well as commercial users in a specific area that could shift their buildings and vehicles to renewable power sooner rather than later.
“Of the vehicle groups that are in the best position to provide value to the vehicle-grid operations, I anticipate fleets will be one of the cheapest,” Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud, director for e-Mobility at New York’s Con Edison, told the panel. “In New York, fleets tend to operate in low-and-moderate income areas.”
Vehicle fleets can include large numbers of heavy-duty diesel utility trucks, buses, company cars and delivery vehicles. In addition, warehouses and manufacturing plants tend to have frequent visits from semi-trucks making deliveries and pickups and adding to the particulate load in areas that would benefit the most from fewer internal-combustion engines.
Wiring an industrial area to expand EV charging by large customers could also benefit smaller companies and residents through the economies of scale. “The system becomes more efficient and therefore prices come down for everyone,” said Phil Dion, senior vice president of Customer Solutions at Edison Electric Institute (EEI). “Additionally, if we electrify areas where we are talking about demand being hyper-localized, those are usually areas where you will also see homes and apartments that are more affected by emissions from trucks.”
Getting those idling trucks out of the neighborhood sooner rather than later can be influenced through outreach by the local utility to explain the potential savings that electrifying operations would create, and the resulting boost to the firm’s bottom line. “If they have more revenue streams, they might convert their fleets sooner,” Reichborn-Kjennerud added.
Converting those fleets to EVs, however, may require additional transmission capacity to be built specifically into neighborhoods where power demand is “clustered” and higher than the surrounding area. Even before commercial fleet operators consider jumping on the EV bandwagon, it would behoove utility planners to begin working with local governments on the groundwork for new transmission into sometimes crowded industrial areas of town.
The panelists noted that the grid has encountered surprises in long-term planning before, such as the invention of air conditioning and the current growth of rooftop solar and other renewables. The industry has come through with flying colors before and there is no reason for the public to worry that the grid will fall short when it comes to EVs, regardless of any initial clustering in the market.
There will likely be room for third-party vendors to provide charging services for large customers, particularly in denser urban markets, but it still will be up to the major utilities to get the power to the customers, which means utility companies need to be included in the planning.
“This is all about infrastructure, and as utilities, that’s what we do; we are planners and we operate the grid and have the expertise to maintain something this complex,” said Lon Huber, Duke Energy senior vice president of Pricing and Customer Solutions. “So this is fundamentally about allowing utilities to play in the game.”
Establishing a reliable charging network in a particular neighborhood amounts to clearing one of the main hurdles to a more rapid adoption of EVs. Utilities can also coax homeowners toward making the shift through outreach that explains the economic benefits to their own bottom lines.
The cost of used electric cars is expected to drift down to parity with second-hand gasoline vehicles in the coming years, so switching to EV for many consumers likely will boil down to the price of fuel, and it may not be necessary for budget-conscious consumers to sink a lot of money into the newest and fastest chargers since an overnight top-off with a modest charger that plugs into any outlet should do the trick.
“Not many people are going to drive 300 miles a day,” Dion said. ‘It’s something else they can adopt without having to do any major renovation to their homes.”
