EV charging insights from utilities and fleets

In the race to implement zero-emission vehicles, the complications of electric vehicles have been well-documented, from range anxiety to infrastructure costs and implementation struggles. While Ford Pro recently launched an electric vehicle (EV) charging program in Massachusetts and California to help with this last challenge, knowledge is power in the marathon that is electrification, and early-adopter fleets and utility companies have plenty of it.

Such EV pioneers include Aaron Schneider, business development director at Ford Pro Charging; Robert Pardo, director of Central Fleet, City of Boston; and Kirk Shields, director of Development, Risk Management & Fleet Ops at Green Mountain Power. And during a webinar hosted by Ford Pro on July 17, these three experts discussed electrification challenges regarding costs and energy management, as well as how fleets are getting smarter at leveraging their charging and EV maintenance.

Challenges of EV infrastructure

“It’s never easy when you embark on a new initiative,” Green Mountain Power’s Shields said. “The challenge that we really want to overcome initially is getting the user on board and getting the supporting infrastructure built.”

And figuring out where to put chargers is an in-depth process on its own, with plans shifting based on input from utilities providers. For instance, the City of Boston’s Pardo first had to work through an extensive data collection process and work with the city’s utilities before expanding the number of chargers in the area.

“Our initial thoughts were ‘Let's put them at different ends of the city, so that way we can have a bigger network of chargers,” Pardo noted. “We worked closely with our local utilities to do some data analysis with the demand for electrical, and then that changed the direction of where we would put them based off of the current infrastructure.”

Cost is a big question, too. For Green Mountain Power, cost-of-charging questions are common, from energy bills to equipment. But at least EVs benefit from relatively stable electric rates, Shields explained, so that customers won’t see the same amount of cost volatility as they might in diesel prices.

But while electric costs might be less volatile than diesel, fleets will still contend with energy management costs for both their chargers and vehicles. This includes intangible costs, like range anxiety in drivers, and physical costs, such as those associated with load management, which is how utility providers manage power so that supply meets demand.

“For peak load demand, a lot of utility costs come from having to buy your own generating capacity to meet the peak load,” Shields explained. “That's very expensive to do, but you have to do it to maintain 100% percent reliability of your system.”

This expense is then passed on to the customer. But Green Mountain Power is working on a solution to cut those costs by using curtailable loads like water heaters, EV chargers, and now electric vehicles themselves as a battery. This reduces the energy that utility companies need to generate during peak demand periods, and thus the costs fleets need to pay, since they’re using power that’s already on the network.

“The new utility model is to choreograph generating resources and load-side resources to make sure that those things match,” Shield stated. “So if we can reduce our peak load, we can reduce a tremendous amount have cost for our customers, which is really the goal.”

Another cost-cutting options is Ford Pro’s Smart Charging Bundle, which offers a free Ford Pro Level 2 EV charger to Ford Pro Charging software subscribers as well as energy management features that respond to grid events and reporting. The system helps manage a fleet’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard carbon credits, too. As of July 17, businesses in California can now access this program.

An adapting fleet industry

On the upside, Green Mountain Power has recently noticed that fleets and the general public have a better understanding of electrification, making the overall process easier.

“They know the lingo and they're really interested in how they can make the most cost-effective transition,” Shields asserted. They also want to “understand what their charging needs are going to be and also how to fulfill those needs.”

And with this greater understanding has come electrification at a larger scale, Schneider said.

“It used to be one or two EVs here and there in a fleet, and now we've got customers ordering 10, 100, or even 1000s of electric vehicles and putting those into their fleets,” he stated.

And for early adopters like Central Fleet, more time with electrification means a better understanding of how to leverage EVs to greatest effect.

“We're getting deeper into sharing a charger and sharing a vehicle,” Pardo noted. “And our expectations are that we’ll be meeting our goals and exceeding where we need to be.”

This applies to EV maintenance, too, where Pardo’s 30 technicians have faced an electric learning curve. But past that curve is a simplified work routine.

“Like I tell people all the time, as soon as you dig into the components of an electric vehicle, if you isolate the high voltage system, it's a very simple system,” Pardo said. “The downtime has been a lot less than with an internal combustion engine, and we don't see too many of the same issues or the amount of time it takes to do the actual PM.”

Instead, technicians are still checking hydraulic brakes, collision mitigation, and the coolant system as usual. The only new information is disabling the vehicle so that the high voltage elements are no longer an issue.

For both Shields and Pardo, the next step for EVs is advancing battery chemistry so that larger trucks can electrify and take advantage of a larger range. According to Pardo, this will help with charging issues overall, because it could let fleets charge more infrequently.

That way, “there's less demand on the grid, there's less charger sharing, and it's just a little bit easier to implement more vehicles,” the Central Fleet director concluded.