Massachusetts wants a 50-fold increase in the number of electric vehicles on its roads in eight years (from 6,000 to 300,000), to fight pollution both local and global. That’s both good and bad news for electric utilities – bad because it potentially changes how and when power is drawn in ways that can screw up the grid (if a rich neighborhood is full of Teslas, who all plug in their fast charges when they get home from work at the same time, the draw could straight the local system) but good because these are all electricity customers, at a time when traditional power usage is flat or declining in New England.
UtilityDive, a publication about utilities, takes a look at National Grid’s three-year electric vehicle pilot that it has submitted to the state. (You can read it here.) National Grid’s $24 million program will utilize a “make ready” approach, where it essentially helps prepare a host location for an EV charging company to install ports, says the story “which could help stave off turf battles seen in other states between utilities and private car charging companies, who worry that utilities will squeeze them out of the market by rate-basing charging networks.”
The plan will also look at demand-response possibilities between cars and the grid, hoping the avoid the local-overload problem I mentioned above.
They seek at 5.5% performance incentive to do the work; with 140 sites, National Grid shareholders could earn up to $1.25 million in the pilot phase,.
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