Pilot Program Test Drives Workplace EV Charging

Greenlots, a global provider of open standards-based technology for electric vehicles, and its partner EVSE, an electric vehicle charging manufacturer, are supporting a California Public Utility Commission-approved workplace EV charging pilot for Southern California Edison (SCE).

SCE deployed 80 Level 2 chargers for a consumer behavior study to test fee-based charging and demand response (DR) at various SCE work facilities. The project, which started in October 2014, is among the first large-scale pilots to leverage the demand response and EV infrastructure industry’s two de facto open standards, OpenADR 2.0b and OCPP, the foundation of Greenlots’ SKY Smart Charging, to manage EV loads without requiring separate systems for charging management.

SCE’s study will examine how EV drivers respond to demand response events and dynamic pricing when charging their EVs at the workplace.

The pilot aims to inform future EV charging initiatives in the following key areas:

• Evaluating the impact of EV charging on peak load and the effectiveness of managing the peak through automatic load curtailment.
• Enabling consumers to opt-in or out of a DR program.
• Evaluating consumer response to a variety of pricing and DR strategies.
• Identifying cost-effective strategies related to system development requirements.
• Directly engaging customers in DR programs through Greenlots applications.
• Evaluating DR as a means of mitigating local transformer overload risk in areas with EV clusters.
• Evaluating the potential for creating accurate load plans through site- and region-specific DR management of EV charging.
• Lowering system costs via open standards.
• Enabling and evaluating charging system response to day-ahead and hour-ahead pricing and load curtailment signals.

The data collected will ultimately provide a better understanding of how EV DR programs at the workplace will impact building loads, energy costs and grid flexibility. Currently, SCE employees are able to plug-in when they arrive at work and opt into demand response using EVSE’s chargers and payment kiosk integrated with Greenlots’ SKY OCPP system and SCE’s demand response platform.