Washington Utility Tests New Path to Integrating EVs

Eastern Washington isn’t an especially well-known plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) market, given most PEV sales in the state are concentrated in Seattle and along the Pacific coast. However, the utility serving a large portion of eastern Washington, Avista, has made an ambitious and refreshingly unique move in preparation for the emerging technology. On July 27, Avista announced it will develop a pilot to demonstrate vehicle-grid integration (VGI) technologies in partnership with Greenlots across 200 Level 2 chargers and seven direct current (DC) fast chargers at residential, workplace, and public charging sites.

The purpose of the pilot is to determine how much PEV load can be shifted from peak load times to off-peak times without using time-of-use (TOU) rates. The hope is that the pilot will show that PEV load may be managed in a manner that reduces grid operating costs and increases grid reliability, thus optimizing potential benefits of PEVs to both utilities and ratepayers.

A Unique Approach

What makes Avista’s pilot unique is its holistic approach encompassing all forms of charging and the use of more nuanced demand-side management mechanisms than TOU rates. Including residential, workplace, and public charging within the pilot enables Avista to collect data on the uninfluenced charging behavior of program participants and then assess how demand response (DR) signals sent to PEV owners changes charging behavior across the charging network. The use of DR signals rather than TOU rates prevents new peak creation at the beginning of off-peak periods and maintains higher levels of revenue per kWh consumed by PEVs than would a TOU rate while still providing energy savings to PEV owners.

The pilot kicks off this August and will run for 2 years. Single-family and multi-unit dwelling residences will have 120 chargers installed, while the remaining 80 chargers will be placed at select workplaces or public locations alongside the seven aforementioned DC fast chargers. The chargers will be integrated into Greenlots’ SKY charge management platform, which is also being leveraged in a similar pilot for Southern California Edison that looks specifically at workplace charging.

Fast Growing Customer Base

Avista’s pilot comes in response to the strong possibility that its PEV population is going to increase dramatically. Washington’s Electric Vehicle Action Plan seeks to ensure 50,000 PEVs are on the state’s roads by 2020, up from the 12,000 registered in early 2015. As of the writing of the action plan, only a few hundred of these registrations were in counties served by Avista. Yet, the market for PEVs is anticipated to increase significantly in the next 3 years as 200-mile range battery EVs (BEVs) at under $40,000 are introduced.

On behalf of mass market long-range BEVs, Guidehouse Insights forecasts in its Electric Vehicle Geographic Forecasts report that Washington will meet its 2020 goal sometime in 2018, with sales expanding into suburban and rural markets. If the PEV market lives up to this forecast, then PEV populations in eastern Washington counties are expected to be at least 7 times greater than current levels by the end of 2020.

PEVs in Use in Eastern Washington Counties: 2016-2020

(Source: Guidehouse Insights)