In this episode, Amanda Myers Wisser and Smriti Mishra of WeaveGrid discuss their company’s focus on electric vehicles’ grid communication and their goal of ensuring that rapid EV expansion leads to grid stability instead of the opposite.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
Just about every analyst now agrees that electric vehicles (EVs) are on the verge of a period of rapid expansion. All those new EVs represent an enormous new source of electricity demand. They also represent an enormous new source of electricity storage.
If they are charged and discharged with no thought to larger grid conditions, they could pose a danger to stability and reliability.
But if their charging and discharging is managed, even at the margins, they can serve as a grid stability tool. Their charging can be timed for periods when power is cleanest, cheapest, and most abundant.
However, to be managed in this way, they must communicate with the grid to which they are attached. That vehicle-grid interface represents an intense area of research and entrepreneurship in the clean energy world.
One company that has made substantial recent strides in this area is WeaveGrid, which is helping to run several utility programs meant to shift the charging time of EVs. The company raised $15 million in series A funding last year, and this year launched evPulse, a program available to EV drivers in northern and central California, where wildfire risks are high. It will enroll eligible drivers in an automated charging program, but it will also offer them early warning when utility PG&E may shut off power due to wildfire risk, allowing them to charge in advance.
I've been following this market with interest, so I was eager to talk to WeaveGrid’s Amanda Myers Wisser (head of policy) and Smriti Mishra (head of utility partnerships) about the company's technology, the programs it is running, and the possibilities for future communication between EVs and grids.
Okay, then. Without further ado, Amanda Myers Wisser and Smriti Mishra. Welcome to Volts, thanks so much for coming.
Amanda Myers Wisser
Thanks for having us.
Smriti Mishra
Thank you so much for having us.
David Roberts
I want to talk about the details of EV control, but I want to start maybe by taking a step back. Amanda, maybe you could field this one. I just want to get a sense of kind of what are our expectations for how many EVs are going to be on the road in 2030, and what are the dangers that that poses to the grid? Like, why are people concerned about this headlong growth of EVs?
Amanda Myers Wisser
I can say with confidence the EVs are coming. You can look at the automaker announcements. You can look at the policy goals and targets and mandates. And we can see that EVs are going to come online, they're going to come online very fast. In terms of projections of where we'll be in 2030, I mean, pick your favorite projector. There's a bunch out there from BNEF or BCG or EF. But I think we're looking at anywhere between ... with a range of those projections, ten to, let's say, 35 million EVs in the US on the road. And that's impactful. It's impactful to the grid, it's impactful to customers. And so, yeah, excited to have that discussion here, but I think this transition is happening fast, and it's exciting from many perspectives, but particularly from that climate perspective.
David Roberts
But from the grid perspective in particular, people are raising alarms about this basically, and pointing to California as sort of evidence, that EVs are already kind of disrupting the grid. Like what are people worried might happen as EVs spread?
Amanda Myers Wisser
There's many viewpoints on this. I mean, you say "worry", I think there can be concern. I think there's also enthusiasm. I think for a long time they're framed as kind of strain on the grid or something that was uncontrolled, right? But I think when managed correctly — I'm sure we'll get into that — they can really be an asset to the grid. And that's really where I feel like the story is kind of evolving to, is what EVs have been and what they will be as we get scale. Looking back about a little over a month ago, in early September, in California, I think with some of the challenges on the grid of the heat dome, and that was when a lot of this discussion kind of became revived, what is the role of EVs?
We're trying to promote the adoption, but then we have grid constraints. And what does that mean? What does it mean when you are going full speed ahead on electrify everything, but also saying we have some constraints when it comes to power use, especially during certain times of the day. But again, EV is presenting a very flexible load. And pairing that with a grid that's increasingly cleaner, with renewable sources, there's a lot of compatibility there. And there's a lot that you can - when designed well — you can get some really great outputs of driving down emissions in both of those sectors, and meeting other goals, whether that be cost benefits, and other kind of societal benefits, and other customer benefits, right?
Like, people, once they drive EVs, they love them. So, I know I'm dipping into a lot of things right there, but I think the high level perspective: is EVs can be an asset to the grid when managed.
David Roberts
Right. So I guess I'd say: the worry is that uncontrolled, they will have negative effects on the grid, but controlled, they could have positive effects. Is that basically right, Smriti?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, I mean, another way that folks think about this problem sometimes is: you look out and say there are about 280 million cars on the road. What happens when they all go electric?
David Roberts
Yes, just to pause and emphasize this — I'm not sure that it is widely understood or appreciated — but, these are really big loads like, house sized electricity demand.
Smriti Mishra
Absolutely. This is going to double the peak of any household that adds a Level 2 charger, which is a very convenient option for folks. So, there's plenty of people who are using their wall outlets for Level 1 slower charging. Your car will have that full 8 hours overnight to charge, and that's great. But we're seeing increased adoption of Level 2 charging, and that is a massive load, a massive change, and something the grid was not designed for. So, it's a fair question. Say, is the grid ready for something that it never contemplated? Our grid has infrastructure that was made 100 years ago.
I worked at a utility and literally was trying to track down paperwork from assets that were there in the time of Abraham Lincoln. And, literally boxes of paper that no one could find.
David Roberts
Was that PG&E by any chance? We just did a pod about that a few weeks ago, about the ancient transmission lines.
Smriti Mishra
You know, this was actually out east.
David Roberts
Oh good, very comforting.
In East Coast Utility, but infrastructure everywhere is old. Having said that, grid modernization is not a new topic for utilities. This is not the first time utilities said "Oh, our grid has old assets, what do we do now?". Grid modernization is something that utilities have been thinking about. Transformation to their models for the last 30 to 50 years. And so EVs are a meaningfully different component than anything the grids transformed with before. But there are some systems in place to add that optimization layer for managed charging. And how do we do integration? Well, how do we apply the lessons from experiences that we've had, as a sector, in the past?
So, if I'm just sort of dumbing down the challenge here, it basically has to do with when are these EVs charging, right? Because what you don't want is a bunch of EVs hooking up to charge at times when the grid is full of dirtier energy, or if the grid is stressed and oversubscribed. You want to charge at times when energy is cleaner and more available. So at the root, this is about timing the charging of EVs. And I have heard about a bunch of programs where EV chargers are sort of programmed to shift and charge at particular times, but that is not the approach you all are taking.
The intelligence and the coordinating software is in the car it's known as "telematics."
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, that's right. And we can work with the charging equipment directly as well, but we find a complementary solution to that is to add the telematics layer. And that software in cars and data streams has been used in insurance applications, and city planning, and other areas for ages. But applying it to electric vehicles is something that is quite new, and it really gives you a more granular understanding of how to give drivers the best experience. Because we're talking about grid problems, but the grid there, honestly, is the first service industry, it is there to make sure people have the lights on when they need it, and in this case, be able to drive their cars whenever they need to.
And so, by having the data in the car itself, you know that battery's state of charge. So if it's particularly low, making sure someone is charged up to an emergency level, so they can go to the hospital, they can go pick up their kids, they can do a beer run at a moment's notice. People need their cars for a lot of things these days, and you get a real measure of flexibility. Driver is parked for an extended period, layering that with the state of charge and knowing what their true needs are.
David Roberts
Yeah, so, we don't have to get too deep into this or too technical, but I would like to hear a little bit about what the heck "telematics" are, like, what all information is gathered and is that in all modern cars? Like, what are we talking about here?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, great, so take it to, a step back to that. Yes, all cars are computers on wheels and the data streams connected to them are collectively referred to as "telematics." Telematics data can be everything from temperature sensors, the ability to lock and unlock your car, it's that battery state of charge, it's all of the information that goes into the maintenance of your vehicle, and in your driver experience relating back to the automaker. All cars have had these computers embedded in them for the last decade or two. And then a subset of the telematics data is what is most relevant for electric vehicle charging. And so companies like ours can access that subset of data for enabling a better charging specific experience.
David Roberts
Are those telematics standardized across vehicle manufacturers and across years of manufacturing such that you already know, without going out and looking, what's available and what's in there? Or is this something where you're going to have to have automakers coordinate or tweak? Are the automakers going to have to do something new here, or is everything already in place?
Smriti Mishra
You know, David, I wonder if I will ever have a conversation that doesn't include the word "are there standards". As you may anticipate, no, there are not standards. Yes, there are software upgrades, and even within the same manufacturer they could shift to entirely new software architecture in a new model year. And so those changes happen and are really important. It's why there is a layer of complexity to actually keeping that experience up to date. Now, WeaveGrid's approach to that is that, we create value for automakers as well as for the grid, so that we can collaborate with those automakers directly on their software tools.
But we work with each of them, basically individually, to understand the experiences of their drivers. What each of their data streams will look like, because they're currently all pretty separate.
David Roberts
So, is it fair to say then that what you would like, what would be helpful, is if there were some industry standardization of these. Of what the data streams look like, what's collected ... Because right now you're getting sort of bespoke data from each different kind of automaker?
Smriti Mishra
That's correct. In terms of what I would like, I mean, I'm probably colored by my experience, as you can tell from my last comment: that I don't want to wait for standards. There's so much change that we need in electric transportation urgently, that I've just seen standards conversations take their own decades. Rather than asking for that, look, machine learning and technology adaptation is something that's growing quickly. Our engineering capabilities to handle different data streams will probably grow faster than the ability to get standards in place. So we're going for it.
David Roberts
Right. But it's fair to say that every modern car is gathering the information that you need to make your products and offerings work.
Smriti Mishra
That's correct.
David Roberts
And why is it that a lot of these programs run, are charger-based, the intelligence and coordinating software is in the charger. You've gone, with telematics, with having the information in the vehicle rather than the chargers. Why do you think that's a superior approach?
Amanda Myers Wisser
To relate to what we were just talking about with standards, the data quality and the types of data you get from telematics is advanced and very high quality. And so, first of all, that kind of relates to standards, and already telematics data is very high quality and there is a movement to have that more kind of standardized. But, that is one of the big reasons why there is kind of an interest in not just relying entirely on what chargers can provide, but also telematics. And you ask the very kind of boiled down question of like, it seems like it's important when cars are charging.
And that's correct, but I would say when and where. And so, with telematics, you also get really good location data. And that's pretty important because similar to some other technologies in this kind of clean energy space, such as rooftop solar, there's a social contagion element to electric vehicles. And so the adoption is somewhat clustered. So that has its own kind of impact from like a grid perspective, and from a user perspective, right? Where you are, in your car, where your car is, determines whether or not you want to charge and what that charging might look like.
And so, that's a really important piece of data that we can get from telematics' location. And then another one is the state of charge, the battery state of charge. So kind of what is that battery level at a given time? And that's really important as well, when you're trying to do sophisticated optimization of charging, is just knowing where the car is, the state of charge of the battery. You can do a lot with that information to provide a really good customer experience and driver experience, but also to give those grid benefits that we said. EVs can be an asset if managed well.
David Roberts
Yeah, it is the world's biggest giant distributed battery, but also every one of those batteries has a driver who doesn't care that much about the grid. So the idea here is, broadly speaking, WeaveGrid's big idea is going to take all this information we have via telematics, and use it to induce EV drivers to charge at particular times and places. Basically, we're going to give, the idea is to give utilities some degree of control over when and where EVs charge. So, describe one of these programs like evPulse, this new evPulse program. What does it look like from the utilities point of view, and what does it look like from the EV driver's point of view?
Smriti Mishra
Sure. So I believe you're referring to a program that we're operating right now with PG&E. So, this is an interesting one where we're actually supporting people during the wildfire season when there's a lot of stress about, "Hey, I could have one of these proactive safety outages and I might have to have evacuation risk". So I have a very high need for mobility, and the outages disproportionately affect EV drivers. And so PG&E worked with WeaveGrid to proactively design a program that would help those customers make sure that they are charged ahead of any outages.
We gave customers the option to sign up for messaging, that additional messaging so they know when there are those outages and making sure they're charged at the right time. Or sign up for automated charge, where we would control their charging. What's really interesting to me is that, we learned that really the vast majority of customers wanted to sign up for that automated charge, and have that peace of mind of knowing that WeaveGrid was using inputs, both for their time of day and their rates, to ensure they had the lowest cost charging, but also their safety. And saying your safety is one of the key inputs, and you will be at charge ahead of periods with risk.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, this may be like macabre to put it this way, but the danger of wildfire inspired outages is a real selling point for this product, right? It gives EV drivers in California even extra incentive and impetus to be aware of the state of charge, and when they're charging, and where they're charging. I have a bunch of questions about the consumer side of this. But, to start with, your car is collecting all this data about where you go, and when you charge, and the speed you drive, all this kind of stuff. I can imagine all kinds of privacy concerns about this, and just customer leeriness about giving people access to this data.
So, how do you protect the data, and how do you communicate? How do you set customers minds at ease about sharing this kind of data?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, so I'll start out with talking about our experience. But it's part of why when you ask for a definition of telematics, I kept emphasizing that we are getting a subset of their telematics data. Because of these privacy considerations. That's always been really paramount for us, to make sure that customers have comfort. And building trust is critical throughout someone's EV ownership journey, if they're going to stay engaged in any utility programs, that utilities have to maintain very high trust value.
And so with that we have a driver facing portal, where they are getting information about what their charging looks like, what their cost for charging is, they are getting plug in reminders if they have a low state of charge and need to plug in. Who of us has not forgotten to plug in their phone and woken up the next morning and been like, "ah"? If the impact of forgetting to plug in your phone was that you cannot take your child to daycare? That has definitely been something in my life that would be a huge drawback. So we're using the driver data to deliver value to the drivers. And that's what keeps them engaged in the programs. And the information we share to the utilities is often aggregated and anonymized. So your utility won't know exactly when and where Joe is at any given time.
David Roberts
Over the years I've followed various efficiency programs, and attempts at efficiency programs, and demand response programs. Various things that give consumers information and then ask them to do something with it. And my impression, over the years, is that customers won't do things. As a broad generalization, they just won't. Like, even minimal expenditures of effort, you basically can't guarantee that people will do that. So I wonder, how important is automation to you in this whole thing? And is that your experience of the customer side of it too?
Smriti Mishra
It's interesting. It's definitely my historic experience of customers. I started my career in demand response, and managing behavioral demand response portfolios is rough.
David Roberts
Oh my God. It's always worse than you think, that's been my discovery. They won't even do that?
Smriti Mishra
We made it as easy as possible. Well, so automation really makes it as easy as possible for drivers, right? I encourage utilities to design programs that are what I call "all carrot no stick." A driver should be rewarded just for staying connected. That's all you're asking of them. If they don't have the flexibility to shift their charging, so in our algorithms we're going to prioritize their customer experience. If that means that they can't shift charging, that's fine. What they're giving the grid is access, and just saying, enrolled in programs. So that's the power of automation. It can create a much simpler customer experience.
David Roberts
When you say "connected", you just mean making their car's telematics available to the utility, or the relevant subset of the telematics.
Smriti Mishra
Correct. And that actually feeds a little bit back to the privacy question that you asked. Well, we partner with automakers, and theoretically could get everybody's data. That's not how any of these systems are set up. We only will work with cars where drivers opt in and give you direct consent.
David Roberts
And so none of the WeaveGrid ideas or programs require active, ongoing customer involvement. Basically, you just got to sign up and say, "Yes, you can do this" and that's it for you as a customer.
Smriti Mishra
Well, I wouldn't say "none." No programs that have the automated feature active require the customer to do anything. That customer just is in the program, they get to open their weekly emails and see what's going on. As a side note, I shockingly find 80% to 90% open rates on those weekly emails.
David Roberts
Oh, really? And this is the email, like, "Here's when your car charged and when it didn't"?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, here's the cost of your charging, here's some information about your behavior. People are opening that every single week, which I've not seen in any other energy product.
David Roberts
Yeah, that's wild. I wonder if this is just, kind of like, a self selecting, early adopter, EV kind of nerd phenomenon, or something bigger than that.
Smriti Mishra
I thought that at first. We've actually launched programs that are territory wide and reach the mainstream customers. And EVs aren't that new anymore, right? There's a fair amount of affordable options out there. It's still on the early end of the adoption curve, of course, so, I'm sure behaviors will keep changing. But yeah, it's actually, in some ways, the more mainstream adoption that's, I think, most interested in that information. Because the really early adopters kind of love being in their spreadsheets and tracking their charging themselves.
David Roberts
Yes, I know a few.
Smriti Mishra
It's the more mainstream folks that are like, "Oh, I need someone else to tell me."
David Roberts
Right. And another sort of striking thing I thought about, the structure of these programs is that, at least currently, customers are not getting rewarded or paid on a per kilowatt hour basis of either saving or shifting. So it's not a performance based payment here. You just get a flat chunk of money for signing up. So what drove that decision? Why not make it more fine grained? Was that just for simplicity's sake, or was that something about customer psychology?
Smriti Mishra
Well, it comes from the perspective of how do you design for the customer first? Right? Like I said, I've been in the business of selling kWh, that's the energy sector it is kWh commodities and grid value, and that's designing for the grid first. But EVs are a very high stakes experience for a customer. It makes a pretty big difference to someone's life if you manage their thermostat incorrectly, and extrapolating that to even bigger stakes with your car. So you really have to design with the customer first. And so, that is why we recommend that utilities, instead of having programs that are extremely performance based, and rewards driven on that kW or kWh values, that it is connection based and access to optimized charging that gives you the insights, the controls.
Because even without those performance requirements, as Amanda was saying at the start, EVs are a hugely flexible resource, right? We mentioned that we know where cars are at any given time, but we haven't talked about what that means from a data standpoint yet. And really what we see is, you see cars parked for 12-15 hours.
David Roberts
Yes, rather notoriously.
Smriti Mishra
And only needing 2 hours to charge. If they have a low state of charge, they need 2 hours to charge. So there's a ton of flexibility. But, by designing the experience to say that all you have to do is stay connected, you're not setting a customer anxiety, that you're going to be forcing shifting based on grid value. You want them to always feel that high trust experience is paramount.
David Roberts
So an EV driver who signs up and gets connected, and doesn't end up, for whatever reasons, for their personal lifestyle, doesn't end up shifting their charging at all, gets the same reward as the customer who signs up and their vehicle shifts all over the place and is a flexible asset. They both just get a flat fee for signing up. That's the idea.
Smriti Mishra
Yes, that's the idea. Although, for what it's worth, in practice, none of these programs are single day long and over extended periods, everyone's participating.
David Roberts
Really?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah. We don't have anyone like opting out of all events. Which I love hearing your surprise, because that's not what my demand response life was like.
David Roberts
I wonder if there's ... probably a subject for some dissertation sometime. But I wonder if how people's attitudes about their cars differ from their attitudes about their hom. And their attitudes about managing their car's energy differ from their attitudes about managing their home's energy. It seems like maybe they might be more adventurous, I guess, or more open when it comes to their cars. Because, as you know from your demand response experience, people are very touchy about their homes.
Smriti Mishra
I'm just spitballing here, but there is something to like, with a fuel gas driven vehicle, you're used to being partially full, right? And thinking about how far you can get on a partial tank. And so, there might be a comfort with partial states of your battery that says, "Listen, with a minimum of 20% to 30% state of charge, I'm confident that I can go get my kids, do whatever I need to do because I wouldn't freak out if my gas tank was a fourth empty or full".
David Roberts
On some level, isn't this, kind of, something utilities ought to be doing anyway? Kind of owning anyway? Like this big potential loads in their territories, it seems a little weird to have management of that giant distributed load be like an extra thing they do, or a third party program that they bring on. Do you think it's inevitable that all utilities are going to have to do something like this eventually?
Amanda Myers Wisser
Absolutely. I mean, I think considering how to control EV load is something that's on the mind of many utilities, and some right now much more at the forefront than others. But yeah, I think that, as we've talked about, the expected load growth, and then of course the customer experience alongside of it, makes it a priority for utilities. And in some places some level of requirement, or something like that coming from a commission or otherwise.
David Roberts
Yeah. One side question about the California question in particular, or California program in particular. Most of these programs, I feel like, are just about the charging and just signing up to have your charging somewhat controlled by the utility. The California program has this extra piece where you'll notify people and charge their cars. If a PSPS, whatever, the temporary blackout is coming. And it just sort of occurred to me like if there's a communication, if there's a sort of communication element of this, are there other things that you might want to communicate to drivers? Are there other types of information you can imagine?
If there's that communication channel, is that useful for other things or is that just kind of a bespoke California thing?
Smriti Mishra
We already had a communication channel set up with the drivers, and that's what the California program was built on. We're like, "Okay, customers are getting useful information through our text messages and emails. Let's add these PSPS notifications to that." So, some of the other types of communications that are useful to them are things like those plug in reminders, where we know a car has arrived home, and if it has a low state of charge, then we can send you a plugin reminder that, "Hey, looks like you forgot to plug in." And there are other messages like that that can be useful.
The other thing I think about though, is how that can expand and grow, and we do regular driver interviews and surveys and those plugin reminders came out of driver feedback, where like this is my biggest pain point as an EV driver.
David Roberts
Oh really?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, when I forget to charge, I hate that. So we keep doing those.
David Roberts
They know that they could just set themselves reminders on their phones, right? You don't have to wait for a company to text you.
Smriti Mishra
Well, the difference is though, that's if you're plugging in every day, that's a very easy system and a habit that a driver can have and maybe you have a reminder for it. But, if you don't drive that much every day, which is true most people, everyone thinks they're going on road trips and running down the whole range all the time. But, if you come home and your car is at an 80% state of charge, you don't really need to plug that in, and we also won't bug you in that scenario. It can be helpful to be like, "Look, I only plug in when I need it and it's helpful to have someone else remind me."
David Roberts
Obviously this is a relatively nascent, I don't know what you call it, an industry? Activity? Technology? Whatever it is. This sort of trying to coordinate EV charging with grid needs, it seems like at least at this stage, it's relatively early going.
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, I would agree with you. I have to say this. The through line of my energy career has been working on a thing when it is new for the electric grid. It's what makes EV so exciting though, because I've worked on a lot of stuff when it's new to the grid, and EVs are being adopted so much faster than anything else. Like you've already observed, the impact is so much bigger from any individual car, let alone the millions of vehicles that are being converted. So when I think about like, look, my driving force and inspiration is to make the biggest impact on climate that we can and the most quickly.
That's what makes working in EVs and creating this whole new market segment really exciting.
David Roberts
One thing. Customers won't do anything, utilities won't do anything either. Utilities are sort of legendarily, let's say, slow moving, not the most nimble organizations on the planet, maybe not the most cutting edge thinkers on the planet. Although they are sort of, all of a sudden, I think, from their perspective, being asked to be super innovative cutting edge companies. But it looks to me from the outside, like, this is an obvious win for utility. I can't see a downside. They get more control over load shifting, and that's something that literally every utility needs. So what is the resistance?
Is there resistance? Is it just lack of familiarity? Or do you get pushback from utilities on any aspect of this?
Smriti Mishra
One of the things that I've experienced, again, being different with working in EVs, is the alignment across stakeholders and that interest in moving faster. I literally, minutes before this recording, got off the phone with a utility. Amanda and I were on this call and they said, "Why move slow if we don't have to?"
David Roberts
Wait, a utility said that?
Smriti Mishra
A utility person said that.
David Roberts
That's not the traditional utility message, let's just say.
Smriti Mishra
And I got to tell you, this was a big traditional utility. So you're hearing that shift in mentality. That's pretty exciting, and great. Every single one of our pilots has expanded within months, and not waiting for a three year project to be completed before we test this one tiny thing, and then maybe do something else. They're saying "We know what works, let's be running." A great example of that is Xcel Energy, and they've got eight states across the Midwest, they started out doing a pilot with us and a few other automaker partners to say, "Let's see how much we can have EV charging be shifted on a 24/7 basis to match our renewables production for wind and solar."
And they're like, that's been great, that went really well. And they went quickly into working with us on territory wide programs, across the full state of Colorado, and adding more states on to that, such as Minnesota and New Mexico, where they're saying, "Look, okay, we can work with all customers on a more unique approach to off peak charging." So I think the next stage will be how we layer multiple signals together for renewables and off peak. But they're creating territory wide programs because that urgency to meet all customer needs is there, in a way that you don't normally see.
David Roberts
That is not the story I usually hear about utilities. Although I have wondered, I will say, I have wondered for years. I'm like, I'm looking at utilities, they're on the verge of a death spiral that you read about this for years because demand has been sort of flat or even falling. They don't have reason to build more infrastructure, and so they don't get a rate of return, so they don't make money, so they fall apart. All this worry and I'm like, well, here comes a giant new load. A giant new pool of demand for electricity in the form of EVs could potentially double your load on your system and give you new life and new reason to build, et cetera.
So why on earth have utilities not been, like, at the absolute front of the pack? Demanding good EV policy from the very beginning. It's been a little bit of a mystery to me, but it's good to hear that they're starting to at least catch on.
Amanda Myers Wisser
Yeah, I think utilities are, electric utilities are very excited about EVs. I think you're asking what is the resistance? And I don't think there's a lot of resistance to EVs, or managed charging, or any of these things. I think there's just a combination of one: a lot of education needed on the variety of technologies available. As well as, not combating, but working with a culture of prudency that comes from being regulated entities. And so, there's constraints there, but I think there is eagerness. And I think as we talked about at the beginning of this segment, the amount of EVs that are coming online, at the speed at which they're coming online, it's all being taken more seriously.
And then in addition to EVs, I mean, there's other electrification efforts, right? And so when combined, yeah, you start to see what you were saying, falling or even just stagnant load growth, turning into growth. Which is exciting for utilities, and there is a potential risk there for ratepayers, like every residential and commercial customers, but that's again where the managed charging comes in and can put some of that downward pressure on rates. And in fact, electrification can be a benefit to everyone in that scenario.
David Roberts
Yeah, it's funny, I talk to a lot of people who are in the business of trying to convince utilities to do things, and usually when you talk to them, it's like they're hacking through a jungle with a machete in bare feet. So you all are in the catbird seat here actually doing something utilities want. So what would, looking to the future, let's maybe get slightly utopian and look five years out or ten years out. It seems like the current programs are relatively primitive relative to what's possible, what's coming. So sort of what are the next steps forward for the EV-grid relationship that you're trying to manage?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, there are layers of complexity on the grid. And so we've talked about how we want to keep things very simple for drivers, but what's interesting is how much complexity in the optimization we can create for the grid side of it. And so, for WeaveGrid, our true north is to build what we call "DISCO". Distribution Integrated Smart Charging Orchestration.
David Roberts
Wow, how many meetings did that take?
Smriti Mishra
To be honest, our CTO came up with it as a placeholder we're like, "We're going to remember that. That's not going to stick".
David Roberts
No, it's great. I'm already going to remember it.
Smriti Mishra
So what is DISCO, really, right? But that's saying what we're seeing right now, what you describe as simplistic, I describe as being bulk system solutions. We're thinking about renewables at a bulk system level, off peak, at a bulk system transmission level. DISCO says let's take those bulk system constraints, but layering it needs down to the transformer level. And what does it take to operate your local assets? You can have an off peak charging, for example, where suddenly all the cars are turning on at 11:00 p.m., call it. And that's fine for transmission, it's great, for renewables, maybe.
But that local transformer limit could be overblown. And increased the aging on that asset, which is a huge problem with the supply chain constraints right now. Because major utilities, the largest utilities in the country, have one year, two year backlogs on their transformer inventory. And smaller utilities are looking at two to five year backlogs. So the complexity we really want to help utilities access is optimizing for all of their needs, down to that localized asset.
David Roberts
Right. So that's where geography comes in again, whereas, in addition to when.
Amanda Myers Wisser
That's right. And there's just been numerous studies on just that point. Which is, looking at a given kind of steady area, if you had high levels of EV adoption, the feeders in those areas exceed their maximum loading limit if unmanaged charging. And what that means is that there is not sufficient power supply in that scenario. So, again, I think, it still points to managed charging. But again, going beyond kind of, some of these smaller scale, and looking at the grid impacts at large, as Smriti referred to.
David Roberts
How does this all relate to vehicle-to-grid technology? Like, most of what your existing programs, as far as I've seen, are all what you might call grid to vehicle. It's just timing when energy moves from the grid into the vehicle. But of course there's also a lot of hype everywhere about energy moving from the vehicle to the grid when needed, when the grid is underpowered or whatever, or when for peak shaving or whatever, pulling energy out of vehicles. Are you all involved in that at all or does that fit in? It seems like it fits into this general paradigm.
Amanda Myers Wisser
Absolutely, it does fit into the paradigm of going from this managed charging, which is unidirectional, to bidirectional charging. And I think, right now, looking at where, let's just say V-to-X is, vehicle to ...
Smriti Mishra
Anything.
Amanda Myers Wisser
... something, whether that be the grid, a home, a building, whatever that may be. There are some serious market barriers, but the potential is very real and the ability to scale those barriers is also something I think we'll be able to do in the coming years. And adds to the value that vehicles can provide to the grid, and to the customer, or the driver, I should say. Yeah, I think V-to-X, you can look at it in a variety of ways.
I think there are some additional barriers for the vehicle to grid side, as compared to the vehicle to home or building that you might use in, let's say, a resilient situation. But, I think, all of those we're kind of evaluating and I think are really exciting kind of direction that we're headed.
David Roberts
I'm so curious about this because vehicle to grid is largely nascent, there's not really much of it happening. And I just hear the widest range of opinions about its future. Like, I can find people who are absolutely, will poopoo the whole idea. That customers aren't going to want grids taking energy out of their EVs, that taking energy back out of the battery, and this bidirectional charging is going to wear the batteries down faster. Be a negative consumer experience.
Smriti Mishra
I'll be honest, I have maybe the most and least controversial opinion on this, which is that I agree pretty strongly with both sides. There is a risk to V-to-G not being done right, being a terrible customer experience. Do customers trust it today? Do they want you to pull energy out of their battery? What if it's for their home? What if it's for the grid? How would they react to each of those? And there's amazing potential, as Amanda was describing, to actually improve the driver experience overall and the grid experience, lower the cost for ratepayers, which drivers also are.
And so it's a question of staging, right? Just like we're saying, when and where are you charging, when and where do you do V-to-X? I think is the most important part is that we need to grow that customer journey, stage it appropriately, understand that there is so much value that the grid needs and can get from learning about charging behavior in a V one G world that will inform how to create the best V-to-G experiences.
David Roberts
And I just assume, since you're in the business of kind of the software of EV-to-grid communication, that if V-to-X came along, if the technology came along and was available, it would integrate into your product pretty smoothly, right?
Smriti Mishra
That's correct. And not just if. Several of the automakers that we work with right now are very excited about creating V-to-G capabilities in their vehicles. So we're actually collaborating with them on that design process, and helping them have insights into their customer experiences today, the utility needs today. So we're definitely key stakeholders in the growth of V-to-G.
David Roberts
Yeah, it's a little trickier because, as you say, the benefits are grid-wide, which again are potentially enormous. You have the world's largest distributed battery, could do enormous things for the grid. But the consumer benefit, the EV driver benefit, is less clear when it comes to the grid pulling energy out of their vehicles.
Smriti Mishra
The most immediate benefit is generally, when you think about the vehicle to home world, where what if my car can be my backup?
David Roberts
Yes, right.
Amanda Myers Wisser
And then there's also the in the vehicle to grid, V-to-G, scenario, what is the compensation to driver? So, that is one of those market barriers I was citing, one of a few. But I think if it's valuable enough to the grid, and there's interest and participation from the driver's car, it will be presumably priced as so. And that is part of it, is the value proposition to the driver, and kind of going into this continued narrative of EV costs coming down, and already EVs compete with just, kind of, the operations and maintenance and that would continue to be a cost savings or at least cost benefit to the drivers. So there's kind of a virtuous cycle there.
David Roberts
A couple of final questions. One is, for you, I suppose, since you are blessed with the opportunity of dealing with utilities all the time. It's clear that there's enough in it for utilities to go for this already. Like, as you say, the utilities are enthused, and why wouldn't they be enthused at the ability to manage their load a little better. But in the larger utility question, there are all kinds of crossed incentives, and mixed incentives, and bad incentives, in the utility world. Reasons that utilities have for pushing back against efficiency and distributed energy, and all these kind of things which they don't really make money off of.
So I wonder, when it comes to the EV utility interface, are there utility reforms that you can think of that would ease or accelerate this? Like, are there things regulators could do to improve this situation?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, I'll open that, but then we'll also give it to Amanda. She leads our policy team, and so she's really having those reform based conversations.
David Roberts
Oh, you get the blessings Amanda.
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, but at a high level there's definitely things in the utility business model that are fundamentally flawed to grid modernization, more generally. There have been utilities that are also asking for changes so that they can make returns on software investments, for example. So that they want to be aligned on their incentives, that delivering the best customer value is also how they can operate most efficiently, right? Anytime that's misaligned it creates problems for both sides. So there's definitely components. But yeah, Amanda you're welcome to speak to some of the conversations that you're more directly involved in.
Amanda Myers Wisser
Yeah, I love your performance based regulation tidbit there. Could go on that discussion for a while. But yeah, I think some of it is just, kind of, some of the things we've been hitting, on which is scale. We've been dabbling around with pilots for a while, and I think getting to that point where it's just like we understand what's happening, we understand we need to do a lot more of it very soon, and getting from pilots to programs. We mentioned that we're helping with some of those in various places across the country. But the scale is just really not where it needs to be right now. So I would say that's just the overwhelming kind of key issue here, is just like, let's do more faster.
David Roberts
And, do you think that will require regulators coming in and saying "You have to do this"? Is that what you want to see happen?
Amanda Myers Wisser
That does expedite things, But I also think that that takes some of the... It's an ecosystem situation, right? I mean sometimes it's the regulator, sometimes it's the legislature to the regulator to the utility, sometimes it's the utility having a great proposal, sometimes it's just that.
Smriti Mishra
Well what I was just thinking was, I feel like I talk to a lot of utilities who say "Well let's start with this pilot, I want to do something territory wide, but I don't know if it's going to get approved". And there is that. So they're like, well do the regulators require it or do the regulators need to give utilities more flexibility? And that obviously varies by region. We generally advocate for giving utilities that choice, because that is something that I hear from utilities. Where they say "I have an idea but I don't think it's going to get approved."
Amanda Myers Wisser
Well then that was going to be kind of the second bit there which is education. Education on this issue: how can particular technologies help? What does that program design look like? What are effective incentives? Some of this you learn from those pilots, but some of this is already done.
David Roberts
Yeah I wonder do you feel like at this point you've done enough pilots and test programs that you have a good handle on things? Are there still sort of like fundamental learnings out there, or do you feel like at this point you're tweaking and improving performance?
Smriti Mishra
I would say there is absolutely no reason to hold back on any of those bulk system values. Even the 24/7 renewal bills match. I'll be honest going into that pilot I was like, okay this we're going to learn about complexities and a lot to adapt. And it was so successful so quickly, that it would be great to see a lot of these bulk system solutions go even bigger and to think about EVs outside of traditional models. Like not just trying to "square peg, round hole" them into demand response programs. And create things that are really ready for EVs.
And so that's something that I think, from a design perspective, it's ready to go big on. I think that what we're really learning is that full DISCO capability, and we're doing pilots on power quality, and additional layers for asset level support. And that's why I think you're going to have fine tuning in different regions.
Amanda Myers Wisser
I would agree with all of that, and I think the answer is there's fundamental learnings. There's not a good reason to hold back at this point, but I think there's always going to be market development. I mean that's what keeps me interested in this kind of work. Things are always changing, and so working with that. And some of those changes are just thoroughly needed. We've talked a little bit about how, what are some of the behaviors? Because to date a lot of EV adoption has been by early adopters, and that segment of the population is pretty homogeneous and privileged.
And I think, so kind of like, as EV has become something that everyday people have, and how does that change behaviors with charging, is things that we still are going to be learning and like let's be open to those kinds of learnings and get ahead of that understanding. But at the same time, like, the technology is proven, the benefits are proven. So let's not wait indefinitely when the technology is coming online, people are excited. Like you said, there's a lot of alignment here. So let's just do more of it.
David Roberts
As you say, in your literature, EVs are a fairly unique form of distributed energy resource, DERs as we nerds call them. A unique form in that they're very frequently and directly used, and of great emotional significance to their owners. And the timing of when they're used, and when they're charged is much more immediately relevant to their owners than say, a water heater, or whatever. But nonetheless, managing the interface of the grid and DERs generally is a thing, a problem, an area that needs solutions. So I wonder, do you have plans to move beyond EVs and get into coordination and management of other kinds of DERs?
Smriti Mishra
Yeah. So that's a really interesting trajectory because, we both want to think about what is the whole home experience for customers. Where EVs are by far the largest load and the largest both impact on the driver's home life and grid impact. So that's a great place to start. But, how do we help people think about their whole home is one area that we've explored a bit. The other is meeting as EVs grow, right now the volume is really in light duty, vehicles and mostly residential.
But we want to help fleet adoptions grow for light duty, for medium-heavy duty. And so we also think about how do we apply our expertise in transportation. And think about that in much more broad classes, as you're more multifamily adoption of EVs. And I just think there's still a lot of potential still in that transportation world.
David Roberts
Yeah. And fleets are much less so than individual EVs. There's less of that kind of emotion and psychology to work through, and they're much more just big pools of batteries. And that seems like a big chunk of good stuff for the utilities there.
Smriti Mishra
Yeah. When you talk about V-to-G, mean fleets and especially buses are just an excellent place to start, right? That's not something where you have to stage that customer journey, because the customer has a fleet operator who can define the needs in a very different way, and there's a predictability to when the buses are needed that's very different from that emotional need for being able to jump in your car at any time.
David Roberts
So can you envision then, in our utopian future, assuming we don't have some sort of fascist breakdown in the next five to ten years. In our utopian future, is the sort of vision that, kind of, consumers have electric households, and cars, and appliances routinely, that becomes routine. And the grid knows about all those things, and the grid is communicating with all those things, and to some degree coordinating all those things, as flexible load and maybe flexible storage. And the customer, more or less, has very little to do with it? Is that the kind of instate we're after here?
Amanda Myers Wisser
Certainly depends who you ask. But I think from WeaveGrid point of view, yes. Having an unnecessary level of interaction with a driver, customer, isn't beneficial to either the adoption trend or just, kind of, getting them to do the behavioral things you need, making it not very behavioral right. Very automated. And yeah, I think this is an active discussion in a few different, kind of, policy venues that I'm tracking where we do have a trend where you have more customers with more DERs. Each of those have their own unique load shapes, and use cases, and all of those things. And at what point do you kind of merge some of that, and get a kind of big picture? But, be prepared for that future, but also know that we're still at the start of a lot of this adoption. So, yeah, I do think fundamentally, it's going to be a fairly hands-off approach and kind of testing what customers respond best to.
It's a really unique and exciting challenge, and it's fun to see how all these things can kind of come together to do this really dynamic, flexible grid, that we're envisioning to support. On the other side, on the grid supply side, the kind of clean resources.
David Roberts
This is real bleeding edge stuff, and moving so quickly. As you say, it's an exciting time to be in this. Thank you two so much. I've been wanting to do something about EVs and grids for ages. This is very enlightening, and maybe we'll check back in in a few years, and see what sort of luxury automation we've achieved.
Amanda Myers Wisser
Thanks so much for having us. Really enjoyed the discussion here.
Smriti Mishra
Yeah, likewise.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf, so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time.
Making sure electric vehicles help rather than hurt electricity grids