Date
Monday, November 13, 2023
Time
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Name
How to Manage Managed Charging: Impacts and Lessons Learned from Four EV Charging Programs
Session ID
C3 - EV Charging
Track
Transportation
Caroline Fuller
Description

EV adoption in the U.S continues to accelerate. In 2022 alone, 750,000 new all-electric vehicles were registered, a 57% increase from the previous year. Utilities across the country are testing strategies to manage and shift this new load to ensure grid reliability, align charging with periods of low emissions and/or grid demand, and lower costs. This presentation will provide a meta study of four distinct managed charging efforts, highlighting key differences across the four programs’ designs, incentive structures, and data collection techniques (from onboard data collection devices to telematics and smart chargers). The author(s) have supported the design, implementation, and evaluation of EV managed charging programs for National Grid Massachusetts, Rhode Island Energy, the Efficiency Maine Trust (EMT), and a West Coast utility client (in progress), covering nearly 5,000 EV drivers. These four programs employ a range of different strategies for incentivizing off-peak or staggered charging of EVs – including per-kWh incentives, charger rebates, behavioral messaging, and active load control. The presentation will showcase and compare the results of each program, including the calculated off-peak charging impacts, and identify key similarities and differences of each program’s specific context and design. We will cover the relative effectiveness of off-peak price signals versus behavioral mechanisms, highlight charging trends observed across different vehicle types and charging levels, and showcase high-level charging statistics as well as EV charging load profiles. Finally, we will discuss further program analysis including greenhouse gas impacts and potential for future load flexibility. The presentation will close with implications for program design and best practices to help future program designers, implementors, and evaluators navigate the challenges associated with analyzing the performance of EV managed charging programs.