I had the pleasure of sharing the mic with NV Energy’s Director of Integrated Energy Solutions Adam Grant on The Edison Electric Institute’s Electric Perspectives podcast. During the broadcast, Adam and I shared our thoughts about how AI-powered technology is advancing electric transportation programs.
Adam kicked off the discussion by describing what led NV Energy to look to AI-driven EV solutions.
“We’ve been using Bidgely’s UtilityAI platform as our overall tool for our customer solutions since 2017, starting with customer experience and energy efficiency and now moving into EVs,” Adam explained. “We used Bidgely’s behind-the-meter intelligence—technology that analyzes energy usage patterns at the household level—to identify customers who had high usage load and were also charging their electric vehicles on peak. With Bidgely, we were able to detect not only the type of charger being used, but also when it was being used – which empowered us to precisely target EV owners with peak charging behaviors.”
Bidgely’s EV Solution not only detects electric vehicles and helps utilities understand their load patterns, but we also provide a data-driven approach to better engage those customers to help them optimize their charging habits and reduce their bill.
“As utilities, we need to recognize that every customer has their own unique charging habits,” he went on to say. “Some charge as soon as they get home. Others charge overnight. And some charge at different times based on convenience. And when the customer charges is just as important to grid management as the charging itself. Our goal was to use this deeper understanding of EV behaviors to inform new EV managed charging programs we’ve proposed to our commission, and really put forth a program for customers that effectively shifts the charging load.”
EV Solutions at Scale
The deeper understanding of EV behaviors that Adam mentioned is the foundation of Bidgely’s EV Solution. We believe identifying electric vehicles on the grid and their charging patterns is not just AI for the sake of AI. This intelligence has the potential to make a tangible impact on the system itself. When a utility is able to really understand who’s charging and how they’re charging, it becomes possible to take informed action to support grid modernization and grid stability and scale it rapidly.
Scalability is crucial. There is no silver bullet in the realm of EV management or EV customer engagement. That’s why Bidgely’s EV solution is designed to engage the full range of customers with different ways they can participate — serving the full EV owner customer base both today, as well as when that population grows to hundreds of thousands of customers.
According to the International Energy Association, new electric car registrations totalled 1.4 million in 2023, increasing by more than 40% compared to 2022. JD Power expects EV sales to reach 36% of the total U.S. retail market by 2030 and 58% by 2035. For a mid-sized utility, this could mean managing thousands of new distributed energy resources within just a few years.
As Adam said, “When it’s time to make the leap from our trial program to the thousands of customers who will be participating in the future, we recognize that it’s going to take significantly more EV detection, targeting and personalized customer outreach to engage the greatest number of customers who are best-positioned to realize benefit for themselves and the grid.”
AI-Informed Rate Design
NV Energy is leading the way in deploying AI and other technology solutions to hyper-personalize and target its programs, including its approach to rate design.
Given Nevada’s primary industries, granular household appliance-level data is incredibly important to informing new tariffs. As Adam described, Las Vegas is different from other major metropolitan areas.
“Beyond the electrification challenges which every large city is beginning to face, the casino industry makes us a 24-hour town,” he said. “Everyone in our community doesn’t work 9 to 5, or even, 6 to 2. A large number of our customers work graveyard and overnight. So there are people who are home during the day when the time of use doesn’t necessarily work for them. So that’s another challenge here in Nevada, is to have the behind-the-meter insights to create a mix of opportunities for our customers that are unique to the schedules they have.”
NV Energy’s strategy of layering different types of offerings encourages participation of the broadest possible range of customers, whether it is through active managed charging, or a time of use rate that provides a way to save money on their own schedule. Not every customer is going to want the full automation of managed charging, but they may be enticed by a program that allows them to save money by scheduling their car’s charging during a reduced TOU rate period.
It’s important to recognize that there is not one optimal end-all solution. Instead, we have to be responsive to the fact that the solutions we offer need to align with customers’ varied charging habits.
“Our approach is multifaceted,” Adam emphasized. “It has behavioral components. It’s got the tariff. It’s got the technology components. So it really is a full strategy to make sure that we have the ability to serve as many customers as possible.”
You Can’t Afford to Wait
NV Energy’s approach to EV management will serve them well. They’re leveraging their behind-the-meter intelligence to implement a comprehensive approach to manage their EV load. Even if you’re not yet seeing the stress of EV adoption in your territory, you will soon, and it will be exponential in its growth. Utilities can’t fail to take steps now, assuming it will be possible to deploy an effective large scale EV program after adoption reaches scale.
Across the country, we are seeing a number of exciting EV program trials. But we can’t stay in trial mode much longer. We have to expand quickly to bigger and better programs and learn from these experiences.
“We know that electric vehicle load is coming. We know potential building electrification load is coming. And we know that, especially in our territory in the desert southwest, extreme heat is a reality. I think we had 32 straight days over 110 degrees last summer. So having that extra load from EV chargers and buildings on top of cooling load is significant,” Adam said.
“We need to find the most effective ways to shift EV load to periods when we have excess renewable energy in our system so that we don’t have to build that next power plant. Sure, we’re going to have to expand our generation capacity over the long haul. But we’re designing our EV program to allow us to delay that step. It’s much less expensive to put these programs in place – which of course also allows us to provide more price stability for customers.”
Measuring Success
At the end of the day, commissions will play a very active role in determining whether to continue, expand or refine EV program investments. Across regulated territories, we’re seeing three key aspects to success.
Customer Engagement and Satisfaction – High performing EV programs will enhance, rather than detract from, the utility-customer relationship. Measuring customer satisfaction with the program and their understanding of how it relates to their energy bill will be a key metric as the utility company becomes the new gas station.
Load Shifting – We need to measure the ability of each electric vehicle to contribute to a kW shift off-of-peak. Doing so requires measuring the before and after – i.e. normally this customer would have contributed Y kW on an average demand day, but now we’re able to reduce that, or shift that to X kW.
This is particularly important when bringing incentive dollars into the mix. We need to begin to equate incentive ROI to the relative value a customer provides to the system. In other words, if a customer is already charging their vehicle at midnight, it does not make sense to offer them an incentive. Rather, we have to intelligently target the right customers -– those who are on constrained feeders or charging on-peak — and shift the metric for success from the number of vehicles enrolled in an incentive-driven program to kW reduction per participant, and begin compensating customers not for their participation but rather for their kWs.
Potential Savings – If you’re filing an IRP or a transportation electrification plan, what can you actually count on in terms of economic benefit and lower infrastructure impact? What can a grid operator rely on? It’s important to quantify the amount of grid support an EV program has the potential to deliver.
Highlighting that customer engagement is the foundational metric, Adam said, “I think that the main thing that we are learning is that education is the most important thing up front — really defining what the parameters are for the customer, so they understand the benefits that not only they’re getting for themselves, but also to the grid and price stability, because we don’t have to either buy power during the highest usage times, or build that next power plant or that peaker unit. Because, as we all know, customers are going to do what benefits them individually for the most part. So showing them their personal benefit is a really good start, and then layering onto that the benefits it has for the community and for everyone else could be really beneficial overall.”
The next big step is integrating that customer engagement into grid side planning and building full non wires alternatives programs.
Looking Ahead
Managing EV load is an essential part of an AI-driven, holistic approach to creating the resilient grid of the future.
Learn more by listening to the full EEI Electric Perspectives Podcast: AI-Powered Solutions for Transportation Electrification podcast.
