San Diego Launches EV Rate Experiment

Monday, 28 June 2010 22:42

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California is expected to be the United States’ leader in electric car drivers. While good for the state’s environment, California utilities need to implement strategies that accommodate the power needs of communities identified as potential EV strongholds such as Berkeley, Santa Monica and San Diego. The concern is that an overload of neighborhood transformers could trigger local blackouts.

One way to prevent such a power drain is to encourage drivers to plug in at different times rather than when they get home from work – the peak energy consumption time of the utility day. The encouragement is coming in the form of financial incentives: setting variable electricity rates that reward those who wait to charge until demand falls late at night or the early hours of the morning. The one drawback of the plan is that nobody can be sure the tiered rates will actually change consumer behavior.

San Diego will be the first to find out. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a pilot project proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric to set variable rates for electric car charging.

PUC president Michael Peevey noted, “This information is critically important as we contemplate a future with widespread electric vehicle usage, given the additional electricity demand these vehicles create and the associated impacts on the grid.”

The project begins in January with 1,000 Nissan Leaf EVs in the San Diego area and the installation of home charging stations for each driver. Some 1,500 public charging stations will also be installed as well as 50 fast chargers that allow the cars’ batteries to be topped off in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

Under the plan approved by the PUC on June 24, San Diego Gas & Electric will charge Nissan Leaf drivers a range of rates, from a low of 7 cents a kilowatt/hour for summer “super off peak” charging to a high of 38 cents a kilowatt/hour during peak summer demand.

If the tiered rates do not effectively change consumer behavior, Plan B is smart charging: driver may still plug in when they get home but the charger communicates with the power grid to determine the optimal time to flip the switch. That technology requires a smart grid so the California Public Utilities Commission has also approved a comprehensive plan to digitalize the state’s power system.

The San Diego initiative is part of the Department of Energy’s EV Project that will put 5,700 Leafs and 2,600 Chevrolet Volts in garages in five states along with 14,650 charging stations and 310 fast chargers.