Clean Transportation

Seattle, Washington, has one of the highest adoption rates of electric vehicles (EVs) in the nation. With just over one percent of the nation’s population, the Seattle metropolitan area has eight percent of U.S. EV sales. There are over 12,000 electric vehicles registered in the state of Washington, more than half of which are in Seattle. With such a huge interest in EVs, this coastal northwest city is a perfect test bed to expand their use. That is exactly what Seattle’s utility, Seattle City Light, wants to do—increase adoption of EVs in the area, while harnessing the benefits EVs stand to offer customers and the larger energy system. The utility turned to RMI’s second annual Electricity Innovation Lab (eLab) to help jump-start the program.

SMART CHARGING

While the program includes some commercial users, Seattle City Light wanted to focus on smart charging technologies for residential customers. There are 449 public charging stationsin the state of Washington, the majority of which are in the Seattle area. The Seattle Department of Planning and Development has issued 394 permits for AC, level II charging stations in commercial zones. The city also has 14 chargers in city-owned or -managed garages that are open to the public, and there are six DC fast chargers located throughout the metro area. However, most EV owners still charge at home the majority of the time. With a smart charging network, the utility hopes to make it easier for customers to invest in EVs and provide more benefits in terms of charging.

Smart charging involves charging EV batteries (and in advanced vehicle-to-grid cases, discharging them) based on utility-, third-party-, and user-defined criteria (such as electricity prices and renewable energy output) while still maintaining sufficient charge to meet EV drivers’ needs. With smart charging, customers can charge their EVs in response to more granular price signals from the utility and so can sync with lower-cost times. This is especially important in Seattle as Seattle City Light doesn’t offer a special rate plan specific to EV drivers,as some other utilities do. “A smart-charging program can benefit both customers and the utility, as it allows charging during off-peak hours when the utility has excess power and prices are lower,” says RMI Senior Associate and eLab Team Facilitator Martha Campbell. In addition, “during the day, when solar panels are generating more power than consumers demand, the cars’ batteries serve as a sink to be drawn upon during a peak demand event. Smart charging creates what we refer to as ‘load flexibility,’ which is critical for maximizing EV benefits to the grid and consumers.”

DESIGNING A PLAN AT E-LAB ACCELERATOR

But going from the idea to actual implementation is the tricky part. “We had an idea of smart charging as an option, but we didn’t know exactly how to roll it out to customers and what a pilot project would look like,” says Jeff Bishop, CFO of Seattle City Light. That’s why Bishop, along with Michael Pesin, chief technology advisor for the utility; Andrea Pratt, green fleet coordinator for the city of Seattle; Gustavo Collantes, assistant director of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy; and Jerry Weiland, managing director of RMI’s transportation practice, formed a team and joined eLab Accelerator.

At eLab Accelerator, the team developed a list of the main outcomes they want to see from a new EV program along with increased EV adoption—improved customer economics, emissions reductions, improved mobility, peak load avoidance, economic development, and increased consumer choice. To meet all these objectives, three main program elements need to be addressed: technology and infrastructure, enabling policies, and new utility business models.

Seattle City Light plans to roll out a small smart-charging pilot with the city’s EV fleet within the next couple of months to test the technology and explore the infrastructure that will be required to implement the program on a larger scale. The next stage after the pilot program will be to target public charging stations. “Utilities have a huge role to play in proliferating the adoption of EVs,” says Pratt. “They will benefit by selling more electrons, but they also have to be strategic as to the new load coming on to the grid.” Therefore, the pilot must be structured to test EV storage as a load reduction tool and an enabler of greater distributed energy resource (DER) integration.

New business models will take the form of new value streams for consumers and the utility. This will include determining the rate structure to use to provide more granular price signals. “A lot of studies and organizations are talking about what benefits EVs can bring to the grid,” says Campbell. “Understanding those benefits beyond their theoretical form and properly monetizing them will be key to creating a program with longevity while enabling the city to achieve its EV and DER adoption goals.”

There are also policy barriers that complicate a large-scale roll out of a smart charging program, notes Bishop. For example, since Seattle City Light is a public utility, it is more restricted in what it can do with ratepayer funds. The state also narrowly views incentivizing fuel switching, something utilities are not allowed to do, which makes promoting EV adoption a bit tricky for Seattle City Light.

However, Pratt believes that Seattle is the perfect place to roll out a program such as this. “Seattle is one of the best places in the nation to drive an EV. Our electricity is cheap and green.” In fact, Seattle City Light is one of the few utilities in the entire nation that is carbon neutral—90 percent of the utility’s electricity comes from hydropower, with the rest coming from wind and carbon offsets. And recently the governor signed into law legislation that allows utilities in the state to rate-base investments in electric-vehicle charging stations. This is an important enabling development that enhances Seattle City Light’s ability to embrace EV customers and help build out transportation infrastructure, something utilities historically haven’t done but will increasingly do as our transportation system electrifies.

Pratt is no stranger to electric vehicles. She manages 79 Nissan LEAFs, one of the largest municipal fleet of Electric Vehicles in the nation, and her only family car (for her, her husband, two small kids, and two dogs) is also a Nissan LEAF. Seattle City Light invited Pratt to join the team at eLab Accelerator to share her local policy knowledge and on-the-ground experience with the utility as they navigate the space.

RAINMAKING

While the team originally thought of the three-legged stool as being composed of discrete elements, at eLab Accelerator the team realized it needed to engage many critical actors across the three program categories to design the most effective program. In other words, it needed to activate its rainmaking network. That’s the next step in the process, engaging all actors, from city officials to customers, and making sure the smart-charging program aligns with both the city’s and the utility’s ongoing EV initiatives. “At eLab, we took a concept and truly came up with a full plan,” says Bishop. “We fine-tuned how we would implement a pilot project, and how we would work with stakeholders, customers, and policy makers.” As smart charging becomes a reality in Seattle, the utility is poised to greatly accelerate EV and DER adoption. According to Weiland, “Seattle’s innovative EV pilot can help lead the way and show that EVs can be integrated into the grid with benefits to both customers and the utility.”

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This article was first published on RMI’s Outlet Blog and is reposted here with permission. Image courtesy of the City of Seattle.

Another week yields another Tesla edutainment video by Bjørn Nyland, this time with his trusty sidekick Jørgen Winter-Larsen.

The premise is simple. Two guys, two Tesla P85Ds and a race to see which route is faster.

Watch to see who wins. Enjoy!

It is amazing to think that the first hybrid vehicle was designed and constructed over a century ago. A lot of motoring enthusiasts are unaware of this fact because clean transportation technology is considered to be a modern invention.

The truth is that eco-friendly, hybrid cars have been around, in some form, for quite a while. It is important to consider the ways in which hybrid motoring has changed over the decades because it helps us to imagine how the clean transportation industry might continue to evolve and develop.

It also puts our priorities into stark contrast, particularly when you consider the world now has some extremely pressing reasons to be interested in hybrid innovation, including the following examples from Livestrong.com:

• Lower fuel consumption
• Reduced carbon dioxide emissions
• Reduced nitrogen oxide emissions
• Reduced need for oil from environmentally unfriendly sources

Leading the Green Charge
Unfortunately, as common sense prevails, planetary resources are running out. This is why every leading automotive manufacturer is in some way involved with the development of an electric hybrid vehicle. The Volkswagen group recently published a sustainability report, in which it promises to deliver “57 model variants with a maximum of 95 g CO2/km, and a reduction of 19.3 percent in environmental impact by production within four years.”

“As one of the world’s largest industrial companies, we bear a special responsibility,” emphazises Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft: “And we want to use our power for the benefit of people, the environment and society. For us, sustainability is not a ‘nice to have’. Sustainability is a real, measurable value driver for our business.”

Volkswagen (VW) is a great example of a massive manufacturer dedicated to sustainability. Unfortunately, not all vehicle manufacturers got the memo. Mercedes Benz has had some difficulty meeting green targets, but is pursuing more innovative approaches to attempt to keep up with the competition.

Innovating for the Future
Common cell is a buzzword among automotive manufacturers because it’s a new technology that promises to “reduce battery costs by up to 66 percent,” according to a report on Left Lane News. While VW is contemplating a switch to common cell, they’re also developing solid-state batteries, which may be able to deliver “three times the energy density of traditional lithium-ion cells with a liquid electrolyte.”

According to eEuroparts.com, VW is responsible for several of the best-selling cars of all time. In fact, the Volkswagen Beetle was the first car to sell twenty million units, outselling even the Ford Model T. However, if you need to update your current VW to something more eco-friendly, consider retrofitting it with some VW OEM parts, which can be purchased at a significant discount online.

Retrofitting a vehicle with sustainable parts is a great way to be sustainable in your own life, without having to purchase an entirely new car.

The Bottom Line
There is so much to learn about the clean transportation industry. Consider driverless cars. Could driverless cars and hybrid technology come together to make something entirely unique? It could be that some of the other remarkable automotive innovations of the last five years actually end up contributing to the development of the industry.

Is it possible that removing the role of driver might have an impact on the need for fossil fuel consumption? Whilst it is difficult to know for sure at this point, it is certainly going to be a lot of fun finding out. With VW continuing to invest in new technologies, it looks like the hybrid motoring industry still has some way to go yet. Look forward to the future because it’s going to be fast, but more efficient than ever.

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Eva Haarberg is a environmental writer based in Europe.