The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) reduce carbon emissions and other harmful air pollutants from the transportation sector, but they are also rapidly increasing load on the electric grid. This presents a growing challenge to utilities, who may be able to benefit from this clean transition but will need to meet demand and address capacity constraints on grid infrastructure to maintain reliable service.
Managed EV charging strategies offer the potential to shift EV load from hours with high peak demand to lower demand hours, reducing strain on the grid and providing significant cost savings to electric utilities and their customers. Optimized EV charging software, like Rhythmos.io Cadency EdgeAI, enhances this opportunity by leveraging data analytics software to dynamically shift the schedule of EV charging to times when the distribution grid is less constrained to create benefits for the utility, electric customers, and EV drivers.
We evaluate three EV charging strategies—unmanaged, passive managed charging, and optimized charging—for two utilities in different regions of the country. We evaluate the systemwide average hourly costs that can be avoided from shifting EV load in Southern California Edison’s (SCE) service territory and the localized grid-edge distribution benefits for a municipal utility in the Southeastern U.S.
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We find that passive managed charging could reduce systemwide utility costs in SCE’s territory by approximately 30% compared to unmanaged charging, while optimized charging can create up to 60% in systemwide savings compared to an unmanaged charging scenario.
In a case study of localized EV charging optimization using Rhythmos.io’s Cadency EdgeAI, we found that the benefits to specific transformers can equate to thousands of dollars in savings in locations with highly constrained distribution infrastructure. Our study demonstrates the value that utilities can achieve from EV management strategies and highlights the opportunity to combine systemwide and localized distribution optimization strategies to provide even greater cost savings to utilities and ratepayers. The full study is available for download here.
This study was prepared by Andrew Solfest, Stephanie Kinser, and Eric Cutter for Rhytmos.io. Contact eric@ethree.com to learn more about E3’s work with DERs.
