ISO 15118 defines the “vehicle-to-grid” communication interface. As the first and only standard to integrate electric vehicles into the power grid, ISO 15118 makes it possible to identify and authenticate a vehicle, coordinate the charging process, handle the billing, and support additional services such as remote diagnostics, navigation system updates and entertainment.
What is Vehicle-Grid Integration (VGI)?
Vehicle-grid integration encompasses the ways EVs can manage charging or support two-way interaction between vehicles and the grid. Managed charging refers to the technical capability to modulate the electric charging of the vehicle through delay, throttling to draw more or less electricity, or switching load on or off. Two-way interaction refers to the controlled absorption and discharge of power between the grid and a vehicle battery, or a building and a vehicle battery.
VGI is enabled through technology and products that provide reliable vehicle charging services to EV owners. These products potentially additional revenue opportunities while reducing risks and creating cost savings opportunities for grid operators. VGI tools might include technologies like inverters, controls or chargers, or programs and products, such as time of use tariffs or bundled charging packages.
Charge Ready Program - SCE
Charge Ready Program – SCE region
To attain California’s zero emission vision, SoCal Edison (SCE) has announced their Charge Ready Program.
Four business types qualify for the program;
- workplace,
- multi-unit dwellings
- destination centers and
- Fleet operators.
How to be elegible;
- Vehicles must be parked for at least 4 hours,
- Deployment of a minimum of 10 charging stations per site
- 5 for disadvantaged communities*.
- You may select either a Level 1 or Level 2 charging station from an approved vendor.
- You must own and operate the qualified charging station for at least 10 years and allow collection of the usage data on any Level 2 charging station.
What does it imply;
- Your new charging station will be installed on a new, dedicated circuit with its own panel, meter and service separate from your current system.
- The cost of the electric infrastructure and the installation of your new charging station are covered by the Charge Ready Program.
- There is also a rebate on the EV charging stations.
- Approved customers in:
- disadvantaged communities will receive a rebate of 100%,
- Multi-unit customers will receive 50%
- Other customers will receive 25% of the base cost.
Power your drive program SDG&E
Power Your Drive – SDG&E
Power Your Drive is an exciting new pilot program that authorizes SDG&E® to install 3,500 electric vehicle charging stations across its service area
Four business types qualify for the program;
- Apartments
- Condos
- Businesses
- Fleet owners and
- Disadvantaged communities.
How to be elegible;
- Due to the limited number of sites and high demand for participation, sites will be prioritized by those that meet the following qualifications;
- Apartments & condos need to dedicate a minimum of 5 parking spaces for EV charging stations
- Business owners and fleets need to dedicate a minimum of 10 parking spaces for EV charging stations.
- There are six easy steps to qualify.
- First sign Up on the SDG&E Interest List then SDG&E will schedule a 20-minute call to tell you more about Power Your Drive.
- You then submit your application.
- SDG&E will do a site site assesment,
- Assess your project and confirms the charging station location.
- The site host then selects a qualified EV chargers vendor
- SDG&E designs your site, installs the chargers and provides EV driver sign-up instructions.
What does it imply;
- The chargers will be owned, operated and maintained by SDG&E at no cost to the site host and includes, all operational and maintenance costs, driver support and billing.
- All charging equipment will be served from a separate SDG&E service and metered separately from the site host’s electric service and account.
Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sub-metering Pilot
Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sub-metering Pilot.
Residential and commercial Plug-In Electric Vehicle (PEV) customers of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), including Net Energy Metering customers, are eligible to participate in the Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sub Metering Pilot.
For residential and commercial customers to separately measure the electricity used to charge their electric vehicles (EV) through third-party or customer-owned submeters.
Who qualifies:
- a customer must install an eligible submeter, which will only measure the electricity used to charge their electric vehicles.
- The Submetering Phase 2 Pilot duration is 15.5 months starting January 16, 2017 and ending on April 30, 2018. The customer enrollment period is the first 3.5 months of the Pilot or until the maximum of 500 submeters is reached per Utility region.
- Once enrolled in the Pilot, you’ll be eligible to participate for up to 12 consecutive billing cycles; however, you may choose to un-enroll at any time.
How to be eligible:
- Select and engage a Submeter Meter Data Management Agent (MDMA) approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
- Complete the Customer Enrollment Agreement with the help of your Submeter MDMA.
- Have your Submeter MDMA submit the agreement to PG&E on your behalf.
- PG&E will review and approve your enrollment if you meet all the Pilot requirements.
- The list of available Submeter MDMAs will be provided when approved by the Energy Division of the CPUC.
What does this imply:
- The pilot intends to improve customer choice and value by using energy meters specifically for PEV charging to help drivers save on fuel costs and avoid upgrading their electrical infrastructure.
- This will allow customers of the utilities to have their electric vehicle charges billed at a different rate than their residences or businesses.
- Encouraging night-time charging helps ensure that there is sufficient electrical grid capacity to meet the needs of all customers while minimizing cost and environmental impact.
FAQ:
Participants will be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis. Customers on a Net Energy Metering rate are eligible but will be limited to 100 of the participating submeters.
EV can raise your home or work bill to higher Tier 3 or 4 utilities rates, the sub metering program is designed to prevent that from happening.
Power Your Drive Program - What are the two Power Your Drive billing options?
A: There are two ways to pay for electricity when using the charging stations. Each rate is an hourly rate and is lower priced during nonpeak hours, and higher priced during peak hours.
- Driver pays: The cost is paid by each driver directly on their SDG&E bill. Drivers are incentivized to charge during nonpeak hours because these are the cheapest hours to charge. An app helps automate this process for them.
- Property pays: The business, apartment or condo HOA receives a bill each month for the electricity used by the drivers. With this billing option a load management plan is required because drivers are not incentivized to not charge during times of the day where the grid is constrained. Your charging station vendor can help you create such a plan.
*Note: This response can be found in the Power Your Drive FAQs on the Power Your Drive website. Link to the FAQ is at the bottom of the page. https://www.sdge.com/clean-energy/electric-vehicles/power-your-drive-faq
Power Your drive Program: How will typical billing rates differ between the Rate-to-Driver and Rates-to-Host billing options?
Rate-to-Driver and Rate-to-Host are different billing options that determine who pays for the vehicle charging, but the actual hourly price for the energy is the same price across both billing options.
Power Your Drive Program: If the rates per vehicle will not be the same, what will be the differences, or at least the factors resulting in differences?
The price across the two different billing options is the same.
Power your Drive Program: If a site host selects the Rates-to-Host option, will they be subject to demand charges or will the EV charging loads be added to our other facility electrical use in calculating demand charges?
Power Your Drive sites will be served by a new SDG&E electric service that attaches to a nearby transformer and meters the charging energy separately. This Power Your Drive service is not connected to the site host existing meter at all and hence, doesn’t impact the existing bill received by the site host.
There are no demand charges associated with the Power Your Drive hourly rate. In place of demand charges, there are two pricing adders that are meant to send signals to drivers to avoid charging during times when the power system and/or distribution circuit feeding the charging stations is constrained.
One pricing adder kicks in during the top 150 loading hours on the power system, and the second pricing adder kicks in during the top 200 loading hours on the distribution circuit where the charging stations are located (these adders can also be at the same time).
Those higher prices will be in effect less than 5% of the year’s total hours, and usually last for 4-5 hours per day in the later summer months. Drivers can simply charge up their vehicles before or after the more expensive hours to get the required daily charging they need at more reasonable prices, which I exactly the behavior that the rate is meant to encourage.
Power Your Drive Program: Will a site host see the charges incurred for each individual charger, in the event they want to assign a specific charger to each employee for the purpose of tracking their use and passing along the costs to them?
On the Rate-to-Host option, the site host will receive a bill with the aggregated charges shown for all 10 charging stations. If the site host wants to see additional data on individual chargers, that information will be available on SDG&E’s online tool My Account.
On the Rate to Host option, a load management plan is required that will limit or reduce charging during times when the system or circuit is constrained. As an alternative, if the site host were to choose the Rate-to-Driver billing option, drivers would be billed to their home accounts, and the Site Host could have one or more cards assigned to them that could be used by Fleet cars or even charging employee cars (as approved and paid for by the site host).
Power Your Drive Program: Additional FAQ for the Billing Options:
Rate-to-Host
- If a site host chooses “rate to host”, then we don’t interact with the drivers. The drivers won’t be billed by SDG&E and won’t receive any signals from us.
- It is up to the host (via their load management plan) to receive pricing information and pass it along to their drivers in whatever way they see fit (as part of their load management plan, which has to be approved by SDG&E).
- There are two adders where the prices are higher, and the prices for those adders are fixed (as we put into our advice letter): The top 200 hours of the circuit will have a 37.1 cent / kwh adder, and the top 150 hours of power system loading will have a 76.9 cent adder. So in a year’s time with 8,760 hours, those adders will be in effect less than 5% of the hours. As is our experience here at CP with employee charging, the adders are usually in the July-Sept timeframe, and usually run from 3-5 hours per day (in our case, with our circuit, the adders might be from 10-2pm or 11-3pm, etc.) There is usually plenty of time for employees to charge before or after the high price periods.