Please note that the transcript provided below is AI-generated and intended for reference. It may contain missing words, misspellings, or other small errors. To request a correction or clarification, please contact info@theclimatecenter.org.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (00:13:27):
Hello. Hello. Welcome everyone. Oh, that was really loud. I didn’t mean to startle folks. All right, so we’re a few minutes past four. We’re going to get started. We saved the best topic for last that happens often with this topic in particular, which is vehicle grid integration. We’re considering today how VGI can support California’s energy future. So my name’s Zach. I’m the executive director of the Vehicle Grid Integration Council, or VGIC. Joined here today by Vincent Anabella and Maya, really excited to get into things. I’m going to just sort of set the stage with some concepts and some ideas and some information and then hand it off to each panelist to introduce themselves and provide a brief presentation. And then we’ll get into some moderated q and a and then audience q and a. So before we get started, just a sense of who is in the room. Just raise your hand if you are in the advocacy space or, okay, cool. Nonprofits, raise your hand if you are an EV driver or hope to be an EV driver. Awesome. Raise your hand if you work in an organization that builds or sells EVs or EV chargers. And raise your hand if you’re a utility or a load serving entity.
(00:14:51):
Cool. Good mix of folks in the room. So vehicle group integration is this broad umbrella term, and you may have heard different acronyms. VGIV two x, V two G, it all centers on a single hypothesis, or at least from VGs perspective, this idea that EVs represent untapped potential as flexible distributed resources to support an affordable and just energy transition and to support that through load flexibility, which is something that we heard this morning from this speaker. I believe it was Senator Becker who mentioned that that’s really the key to unlocking a lot of California’s energy future is tapping into these resources. And so first off, just quickly, who’s VGIC, national member-based nonprofit organization supported by several of the large auto manufacturers, charging companies, aggregators of EVs and other folks in that space. We do primarily research, education, advocacy, including through some recent best practices documents and white papers that we’ve published would encourage folks to check that out.
(00:16:00):
And of course if you’re interested in joining, come say hi after word. What is vehicle grid integration? Again, it’s that core concept that we can use EVs to support the grid. They’re first and foremost mobility resources, but they can also provide these services and we’ve broken it out into a few distinct use cases. On the left-hand side, you’d see sort of unidirectional managed charging, sometimes called smart charging or V one G, optimizing the time or location of EV load to support customers and to support the grid. And then there are a few bi-directional charging use cases. Vehicle to everything might be a term you’re familiar with or V two X, essentially tapping into the vehicle battery to support some use case could be either islanded from the grid or what’s listed here, sort of V two X backup power using your vehicle battery to support your home during an outage, for example.
(00:16:58):
Or grid parallel where you’re actually operating in concert with the grid and you’re connected to the larger electric power system and you’re either minimizing your bills or providing services to the grid. And then a few other use cases that a little bit more nuanced, but essentially doing smart things when we build these sites and connect them to the grid so we’re not just assuming we’re adding EV load, but truly integrating it and leveraging it for the benefit of all customers, not just EV drivers or EV fleet. So how do we do that? One way is to accelerate transportation electrification by lowering the cost of ownership and operation of these vehicles. So there’s been some study, this first item from the California Energy Commission modeled how can managing energy support the charging costs and sort of take what is already a lower fueling cost compared to gas or internal combustion engines and drive that delta even further.
(00:18:01):
So you’re lowering costs for these fleets or these customers. So here’s an example from Stockton Unified School District for that sort of managed charging use case or smart charging. And then on the bottom half of the slide, there’s an example of school districts in San Diego, Cahoon Valley School District in particular being paid for their bi-directional charging exports. So this is real, especially in that second case, real money that helps offset those costs for customers and fleets to electrify their fleets. We can also use these vehicles to support the decarbonizing power sector, so we can use manner charging and bi-directional charging to help offset the use of old polluting peaker plants. So this may have also come up today throughout the day. On the bottom you could see how you can actually use V two G power conceptually to mitigate the use of natural gas plants.
(00:19:01):
And that’s the modeling that’s been conducted. And then on the top right, I like to pick on New York City, they have a lot of really old polluting peaker plants. Some of them run jet fuel during the winter. It’s really nasty, nasty stuff. And they’re old and they’re paid a lot of money out of market to stay online and cost money, but we can use EVs anyway or instead to provide that power rather than through a gas generator. We could also use it to drive down rates and support affordability for all customers. So again, I am sure this is a theme that came up throughout the day, ensuring affordability for all Californians, not just those with solar or storage or EVs or insert new green tech here, but ensuring that we’re using EVs to have the most efficiently run grid that we can and lower the cost of building out the grid to serve those EVs, right?
(00:19:57):
So if you look at the lower levels of the grid, right, feeders and sort of these local infrastructure components, how can we make sure that EV charging is optimized so that we’re mitigating the amount of build out we have to do of this infrastructure and we’re actually making the most use of what we already have built out there. So that’s what sort the numerator of this rates equation. Again, conceptual rate design is a little bit more nuanced, but on the denominator, we also want to make sure that we can, utilities can sell electricity to customers and in doing so, put downward pressure on rates are spread out the costs of building out and maintaining this infrastructure across more customers, across more kilowatt hours. And so ensuring that we’re really shifting load from the peak periods to the off peak periods, this all falls under the question of why VGI?
(00:20:50):
Why are we doing this? Ensuring that there’s decarbonization, ensuring that there’s affordability and perhaps most importantly, ensuring there’s resilience for communities, making sure that we can use the embedded capabilities in vehicles and chargers to prepare for outages and make sure folks are not left stranded during a wildfire or other outage. And also have these resilience hubs that tap into these huge batteries in buses and other vehicles. So that’s all for me. I do also have an appendix here that list some of the currently available bi-directional charging equipment. So there’s a lot of text. This is more meant to be a resource for folks. I dunno if the slides will be sent out, but I’m getting a head nod. Yes, so folks can take this home and study on the light duty side, some existing solutions, some anticipated solutions on the light duty side, both vehicles and chargers.
(00:21:44):
And then also on the medium and heavy duty side. In fact, in California, if you want to buy an electric school bus, most likely you’re going to be tapping into one of these two sources of funding HB or zes B, sorry for the acronyms, but those are both funding that’s required to have bi-directional charging school buses in order to get that funding. So I’ve been talking a lot, this will be the most you’ll hear from me, I promise. But really appreciate everyone tuning in for the sort of background and context why this is important. And it’s my pleasure to hand it off to Vincent to talk about the CEC’s work. Vincent, do you want to stay there and I can hit this next slide or do you want to come up here? You prefer? Okay. Alright,
Vincent Weyl, California Energy Commission (00:22:27):
Thanks. So good afternoon everyone, and thanks for making it so far. One thing I want to get out of the way, this accent you’re hearing, it’s French. So those have known me for years. No, it’s not going away. So I’ll try my best to speak slowly and make myself understood. My name is Vincent Weyl. Well I’m a VGI principal in the fuel and transportation division of the California Energy Commission. As most of you know, the California Energy Commission is the main agency for energy policy, energy planning for the state of California. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to put VGI and the CC’S VGI activities in the more global context. So in the fuels and transportations division, one of the main missions is to build the charging infrastructure we need to support the state’s goal for electrification. So just to mention some of them, you know about the a hundred percent new Zev sales 2035, same thing for MDHD in 2045.
(00:23:31):
We have an intermediate goal of 5 million ZEVs on the roads by 2030. And then one of the things we do at the cc, we have this every other year, we publish an infrastructure assessment report, AB 2127, where we identify based on data and extensive modeling, the number of charging infrastructure ports we need, whether it’s AC or DC to support electrification. So the last AB 2127 assessment measures that at 1 million charging ports before that used to be 1.2. And we are working on a new report that’s going to be issued toward the end of this year that will update these numbers. And again, that covers both light duty, medium and heavy duty.
(00:24:15):
So our goal is to support the adoption of zero emission vehicles first and foremost. And to do that, there’s really two trucks we’re pursuing. The first one, we call it broadly driver experience. If EVs are better vehicles than their eyes counterparts, people will buy EVs end of story. So we want to make sure that EVs stay better vehicles. So that means in terms of total cost of ownership, in terms of experience, rather experience operating and owning these vehicles. And in terms of performance. So on the performance side, I think we’ve never had as many new exciting EV models as we have today In 2025, some of you had a chance to see the Cadillac Escalade, beautiful super performance, not necessarily the most affordable but very exciting vehicles. And today, and I think most of you, I’m very excited to see a lot of EV drivers here today. I don’t think any one of you will go back to an ice vehicle once you’ve started driving an ev. So I think from a performance perspective, we’re doing good from a total cost of ownership. Unfortunately, you all know the context, the federal rebate comes under question.
(00:25:27):
You’ve seen that the sales, I mean we got a good year in 2023. It was stable in 2024. If you look at the Q1 data as reported by the California Dealers Association, it’s taking a hit due to a drop in Tesla sales mostly. But generally the sales are decreasing. So we are worried that the EV adoption numbers are not going to be that good. And that’s the number one issue for us right now. And then in terms of driver experience operating these vehicles and something that FTD has a direct impact on, it’s you all heard about concerns about range anxiety, concerns about availability of charges, concerns about the reliability of charges. These are things that we actively addressing. So I know it’s not a topic of the day, but I just have one slide on what we’re doing in terms of improving the driver experience.
(00:26:18):
And because this crowd is very knowledgeable on bill numbers, I’m going to mention a few. So the CC has different levers when we want to influence and drive adoption or industry to make progress. The key ones are regulatory authority. I call that the stick. You must do that. Another one is the carrot, which is funding. So we have quite a bit of funding with the clean transportation, which by the way, we got 1.4 billion approved in December of last year to continue our efforts there. And the third one is our continued engagement with industry. And we are leading in many ways in terms of driving the industry towards an interoperable world and technology on setting up facility for lab testing, et cetera. So these are our three levers and we’re deploying them intensively to support driver experience. So some of these bills I was referring to, one is AB 2061, which is reliability that answers the question, I’m a driver, I go to a charging station, but it work, right?
(00:27:16):
You all heard all these horror stories. So within reliability, they are requirements for reporting for usage and uptime. So that’s being worked as we speak. Another one is SB 123. We refer to it internally as the payment bill, but I think more importantly it’s this is authority that got transferred to the CEC from CARB and that gives the CEC authority to starting in 2028 to modify the payment requirements at public charging stations. But more importantly, there are two things that are important to us right now. One is the DC fast charger plug and charge requirement that’s in place today. So all the public DC, fast charging in California need to support plug and charge, which is the best driver experience you plug, you don’t need to worry about credit card, et cetera. And the other one is the requirement to support credit card payment or payment, even if people are not subscribed, don’t need to download an app or register, which to me is key because it’s accessibility.
(00:28:15):
You see a public charging station, if you have a credit card or a phone, you’re able to complete the charger. So that’s very important. The last one of this bill is AB twenty six ninety seven, which we call the roaming bill, which enables you to, let’s say you signed up with a major charging network provider. You have your app, you have your payment methods, everything’s already identified. If you go to another public charging network, you can use these payment credentials without starting from scratch. So these are all regulatory work that’s currently in progress. And I think from our perspective, I mean you see the vision we are pushing on the S slides, which is any driver with any NV can go to any charging network and complete an easy charging station. So charging session. So one of the things we’re pushing is for plug and charge future. So again, it’s very important work for us because we’re convinced that the key driver of adoption of EVs is this driver experienced.
(00:29:13):
And number one problem we need to solve. So then, and I know Kurt and I sometimes have disagreements comes VGI. The way we look at VGI is twofold. I know there’s a narrative that VGI, it’s a set of technologies that it’s coming in the future and I want to push back against that. To me, VGI happens the first time you plug an EV to a grid connected charger. The way the PUC defines VGI, it’s any method of altering the way a vehicle charges or discharge in a way that benefits both the grid and the driver. And so if you look at just the way you’re able to charge at your home, you plug the vehicle and chances are you responding to time of use, you try to avoid these peak times where electricity is very expensive. That’s VGI. So to me, VGI is not something you want to push in the future.
(00:30:00):
VGI is happening today. And so once I say that, I tend to see VGI as a barrier or a catalyst, it’s a barrier. If we’re not able to energize people that are looking to drive EVs, companies that are looking to electrify their fleets and they cannot get the service upgrade that they need, they cannot get the site energized or fast enough. So this is something we need to address. Has nothing to do with smart charging technologies, bidirectional, it’s just serving the needs of people. So if we’re not able to do that, we slowing EV adoption. So that’s the barrier way. And then the catalyst way is there’s a lot of potential and key value to both the end users and the grid that sits in these mobile batteries, as you all know, all heard today. And this can serve as a catalyst because if as a driver I hesitate between an ICE and an ev, let’s say they’re at equivalent TCO, if I can find that by doing VGI services, I can make a little bit more money that’s going to push me in the EV space. So in that way, VGI can be a formidable catalyst of EV adoption. So what is the CEC doing with regards to enabling VGI at scale? So it’s not a matter of enabling VGI, it’s scaling VGI, which is happening today.
(00:31:17):
And just one other comment, VGI works across all the divisions of the CEC. It’s not just a fuels and transportation topic. So energy assessment, energy efficiency, ERDD, which is our research and development. There’s a lot of divisions. Everybody is concerned and involved in the VGI. So speaking about the levers I mentioned today here there are four. So again, we find the regulatory authority, we find the funding, we find the standardization and the engagement with industry. So if you look at the two big, I’ll start with the funding. So the two big programs that you see, one is called Redwoods. It was a responsive EV charging equipment with dynamic signals. So this is a smart charging program where you have VSCs, whether it’s residential, commercial, agricultural, I mean we have a bunch of projects in different spaces. They’re able to respond to dynamic rates or dynamic signals where you have hourly pricing and you have a company that optimizes the charging based on the end customer needs and the price that you pay based on this rates.
(00:32:24):
So we have 10 projects that we’re funding. It has two phases. First phase around 20 million, second phase around 180 million. So it’s significant funding. And of the 10 projects we’re funding, there are four that have bidirectional chargers. So bidirectional charging is something that’s happening today. The one next to it, it’s ERDD. So this is an epic fund called EVs as DERs. This is association that’s open, it’s in the scoring phase right now. And this one has multiple tracks. One of them is lowering the cost of V two X. So this is very important. We speak about B-to-G capable vehicles that tend to be expensive. And even once you have the vehicle, you need to buy infrastructure, which is also expensive. So there’s a big truck. How can we lower the cost and make B to G and vibrational charging more affordable to end users?
(00:33:13):
So very quickly, because I’m running out of time, I’m just going to mention some of the regulatory authority. So load management standards and DSGS. This is things of the past, I’m not going to cover here, but there are two new builds. SB 59 has been mentioned earlier. So that’s the CC has authority to potentially require certain vehicle weight classes to be bidirectional capable if we identify a sufficiently compelling beneficial use case to the grid and the end user. So there’s a lot of if, but essentially that covers bidirectional capable vehicles. So this is something that we’re currently analyzing, noting that a lot of OEMs, major ones have come out recently. Some of them already have a fully bidirectional capable lineup. Others have announced that the full lineup is going to be bidirectional very soon. So this is something that’s already happening in the space. So we see that it’s very encouraging.
(00:34:02):
So we want to see how we can reinforce that and more importantly, make this usable by end users. So that’s some work that’s going on with SB 59. The other one that’s interesting is SB 49, which is the flexible demand appliance standard. So the CC work that’s looking at different appliances, pool pumps, smart hemostat, and creating some requirements to make these devices capable of responding to grid signals and make flexible loads. And one of the tracks is EV evcs. So again, analysis is working on that, but that may result in some interesting CC authority to make moves towards bidirectional, at least smart charging for evcs. Yeah, so I’m running out of time. There’s a lot more on this slide, but hopefully you guys will have a few questions, but thanks very much.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (00:34:57):
Thanks Vincent, and thanks for leaving. Nothing up to the imagination. I feel like you’ve covered everything really well.
Anna Bella Korbatov, Fermata Energy (00:35:08):
Thank you.
(00:35:26):
I am Annabella Corbit, I’m with ADA Energy. ADA Energy is a vehicle to grid services provider. Sorry Zach. Thank you. We’ve been around for about 10 years, have been with ADA about eight years, and I’m here today to tell you about the V two G that’s here. Vincent said it’s happening today. So I’d like to tell you a little bit about bi-directional electric school buses and how they can support the grid and also enhance the resilience of the communities that they serve. So I’ll be spotlighting some B to G school bus projects across California, the use cases that they’re doing, the benefits they’re providing to the local communities, to the school districts, to the fleet operators, and what we can learn from them and how we can get these projects to scale.
(00:36:12):
So first project, and this is kind of going in chronological order, so we’ll start with some projects that started a few years ago. And the last project will be something that is in development now. So this first project that I wanted to spotlight is a venture between newbie San Diego Gas and Electric and Coon Valley Unified Union School District. It’s in San Diego, California. And so this project has been in the works for a while. Back in 2019, Cajon Valley Union heard a presentation from sdg e about the benefits of electric school buses. And their transportation director began researching options. And this is how they started their fleet electrification journey. Eventually they teamed up with newbie and they procured six new electric school buses that were bi-directionally enabled. They were paired with six 60 kilowatt bidirectional DC fast chargers. And the first successful discharge of these buses happened in June, 2022.
(00:37:17):
And these buses are participating in CPUC program called ELRP, the Emergency Load Reduction Program, which is an emergency demand response program that is available from May to October four to 9:00 PM. So it’s basically calling upon distributed energy resources, including bi-directional chargers and vehicles to provide relief to the grid during those system-wide peak hours. And you can get compensated at $2 per kilowatt hours. Very big deal for those of us in the industry because it was the first PUC program that allowed investor and utility customers to actually get compensated for power that they’re exporting to the grid. And I think it was 2022 or 2021, that subgroup was created that allowed bi-directional equipment to be compensated for grid export. And so among the benefits here are emissions reductions, revenue from V two G services, lower ev, total cost of ownership, and of course air quality benefits and improvements.
(00:38:20):
And this project, many of you have probably heard about it, I couldn’t leave it out, I had to spotlight it. This is a Zoom’s Oakland project. It’s gotten a lot of press nationally. Canary Media had a great article about it as well. It’s the nation’s first all electric and bi-directional school bus fleet went live this September to coincide with the start of the school year. It’s 74 all electric BYD school buses paired with 74 Telus power green bi-directional chargers. It’s estimated that this project is going to deliver about 2.7 megawatts of power to the grid during peak times. And what makes it unique is that this is not just providing emergency demand response and system-wide peak shaving. These chargers and buses are also responding to pg E’S V two X pilot, which includes a dynamic rate. So pg e calls it HFB hourly flex pricing.
(00:39:19):
So this now opens up a new value stream for bi-directional charging projects to access value and export compensation outside of the made October demand response season. So it really can help change the calculus for BGI services providers like us and our school bus fleet partners because it can basically opens up an entire new fairly lucrative value stream and it can make it easier for school buses, school bus, sorry, school districts and fleet operators and transportation as a service partners like Zoom to help school districts make that switch. And so benefits like the previous projects, they’re looking at massive emissions reductions, air quality improvements, revenue from B two G services and utility bill savings from participation in pg e’s dynamic rate pilot, which also includes an upfront incentive of about $3,500 per bi-directional charger.
(00:40:24):
And the last project I’ll talk about is newbies reschool. We love acronyms in the VGI space, it stands for Resilient Energy Solutions for schools. And this project is really unique because it’s not just providing demand response, it’s not just doing managed charging like most VGI and V two G school bus projects. It’s also going to have a microgrid component. And so this project will at two school sites in California demonstrate vehicle to building capabilities. One of those sites that’s confirmed is Porterville Unified School District in California. The second site is currently being identified. So this is a project that’s in development, it’s a CC grant funded opportunity ties in nicely with the work that the climate center is doing on resilience hubs, and it will include the installation of three bi-directional EV chargers and up to three bidirectional school buses and also the installation of battery energy storage system.
(00:41:35):
So Porterville Unified School District has a gymnasium and athletic center that has been identified as a test bed for this resilience hub concept. So this partnership between newbie and the climate center is going to demonstrate how bi-directional charging with school buses can serve as resilience hubs. So maybe some of you’re familiar with the concept of a resilience hub, but it’s essentially a center that can enhance the community’s capacity to adapt to climate change. So heat waves, wildfires, power outages, floods, and this porterville site, this gymnasium is the first confirmed site to serve as the technical proof of concept for resilience hub. There’s an ongoing collaboration between newbie and the climate center to identify more school sites that have the electrical infrastructure in place that’s compatible for a solution like this. And that also have the community readiness. So a facility that’s centrally located, accessible and big enough to serve as a resilience hub.
(00:42:44):
And I borrowed a slide from the climate center on this just to give you an idea of what a resilience hub can provide. It can obviously provide charging power, medical equipment, air conditioning, wifi, lighting, so all of the critical services that residents might need in the event of a power outage or a wildfire or they have to flee their homes during any kind of climate related natural disaster. Yeah, so that’s it. On projects, those are three. There are many more bi-directional charging projects happening with school buses in California and across the country with other transportation as a service providers like Highland Electric and I think Mobility House. So California is not unique. We’re seeing more and more school bus B two G school bus projects across the country. And I wanted to just conclude with a couple key takeaways. We hear often that V two G is the wave of the future. It very much is, but it is also happening today. It’s here today. It’s earning thousands of dollars in revenue for school districts across the country. It’s an ideal use case for V two G. These buses are parked and generally charged up during the four to 9:00 PM system-wide peak. I think we heard Senator Becker earlier talk about those 40 peak hours of the year school buses are parked charged up. They can help meet that peak through programs like the emergency load reduction program, demand side grid support.
(00:44:28):
They’re addressing energy equity challenges. Maya will speak to that resilience challenges and the climate crisis and importantly through collaborations like is happening with the Climate center. V two G school bus projects can bolster community resilience and help provide backup power to resilience hubs. And importantly, they’re also going to inform the development of VGI blueprints to support the transition to V two G electric school buses across the country. So all of these projects, whether they’re CC funded or not, are coming going to bring the industry policy makers, regulators, everyone in the VGI space, best practices and learning. So we’re watching these projects closely to learn what we can do, what needs to happen to scale. And so my last slide is a little addresses the challenges to scalability. I’m sure we’re going to get into this during the panel discussion, but as I mentioned, accessing export compensation outside of the seasonal demand response period is key for MA Energy has worked on V two G school bus projects with partners in Southern California V two G interconnection remains a barrier.
(00:45:44):
It is long and it is difficult and energization timelines are a big issue. And these large school bus projects are running into distribution grid constraints. So looking at solutions like flexible service connections and the new limited generation profiles decision that came out of the PUC last year, there are ways that we can energize fleets faster through automated load management and flexible service connections. I don’t want to get into that too much because its own subtopic, but it’s a key concern for VGI in general is interconnection. And lastly, availability of infrastructure funding and the stackability of upfront incentives. So all of these projects were funded through a combination of programs like the EPA Clean School Bus Program, Carl Moyer funding CARB’s hfi program. So in the absence of the EPA clean school bus funding, which might be going away, school districts and fleet operators and VGI services providers like ADA are going to have to find ways to fill that gap. So we’re going to have to think creatively about how to make the business case pencil out for school districts. Then everyone in this ecosystem if a major part of that funding goes away. Yeah, and I’m at time, so thank you.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (00:47:13):
Awesome, thanks Annabella. Did you want me to just, or you want me to click through your slides?
Maya Iñigo–Anderson, Communities for a Better Envi (00:47:27):
Alright. My name is Maya Igo Anderson. I’m with Communities for a Better Environment and we’re a statewide environmental justice organization. We represent membership groups in the Bay Area in LA County specifically. I do much of my work in southeast Los Angeles. I lived in Southgate for a while, which along with Huntington Park are the two biggest cities in Southeast Los Angeles. As anyone who’s traveled to southeast Los Angeles knows it’s a pretty heavily polluted community with a fairly high poverty rate. It’s a majority Latinx community. And for the sake of today, I’ll be talking a lot about equity and environmental justice communities. And just for the sake of today, when I talk about environmental justice communities, I’m referring to communities that are above 50% of the state average pollution levels as per Calen virus screen 4.0. And also communities that by and large have relatively high poverty rates and in some cases are majority communities of color.
(00:48:35):
I also want to acknowledge that bidirectional charging and equity is a huge topic. It could probably be a PhD thesis or a book. So I’ll only start to post some questions today that we can in the future figure out together how to answer to make sure that the bi-directional charging transition is one that is equitable. And I also want to acknowledge that we’re only a few minutes away from the happy hour, so I’ll just cover highlights and then offer my email in case folks want to reach out after today. So one thing I want to acknowledge about bidirectional charging or VGI technology is that as we’re creating a solution that’s both a clean transportation solution to clean our air, but also a solution to provide clean energy for communities, we’re creating the potential to move away from reliance on gas-fired peaker plants.
(00:49:27):
As a lot of you are aware, gas-fired peaker plants are typically located in environmental justice communities and are heavily polluting in Southeast LA for example, we’re very close to the malburg plant and EJ communities are often at risk of being exposed to high levels of NOx PM 2.5 VOCs, sulfur dioxide. And of course, environmental justice communities also face higher rates of asthma, lung disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and even birth defects and premature death. So each of the criteria, pollutants I’ve mentioned, obviously have a complex set of health conditions that they’re more likely to cause or exacerbate. We won’t have time to go into the details today, but I think really the challenge we’re confronting California’s environmental justice communities is the combination of pollution from stationary and mobile sources. Of course, transportation and mobile sources account for a lot of PM 2.5 pollution, which is extremely harmful. And CARB actually estimates that about 7,200 annual deaths could be prevented if we somehow manage to eliminate PM 2.5 altogether in California. And so now I’ll pivot into something that I think is on a lot of people’s minds and that we talked about this morning and some of the elected representatives talked about including Senator Becker, which is the affordability crisis. So raise your hand if you feel like you’ve been touched in some way, shape or form by California’s affordability crisis.
(00:51:13):
So that’s a lot of people, right? So I think for both low income and moderate income communities, rising rents and housing costs, utility costs, the food costs, et cetera, have combined to create a really tough situation. And when we’re talking about community members for a living at the poverty line or just slightly below or above the poverty line, we’re really talking about people having to make very tough decisions. When I’ve talked to CBE members in our Southeast LA leadership committee, there’s a lot of concerns about juggling rising rents, rising electricity costs if anyone from Southern California Edison is here, let’s talk. And also increasing cost of food, transportation, et cetera. And so as you can imagine for a lot of people, technology upgrades for transportation are not on the top of the list of essentials to spend money on. We do have some CBE members who have worked with CARB on getting some of the incentives for electric vehicles or hybrid vehicles, not specifically VGI capable vehicles or VGI charging technology.
(00:52:26):
But since we have folks here from the CEC, maybe in the future we can make sure that we’re providing that information for our members and folks in the community. And with that, I want to acknowledge that we obviously have the opportunity of the CEC incentives for VJI technology, but again, I want to acknowledge that even with incentives, a lot of low income Californians are really struggling right now. So we have to think creatively about how to really make this technology available and accessible. Also, I do a lot more work with carb advocacy and connecting our members with carb staff, but what we’ve learned working on making sure that carb incentives are widely available in environmental justice communities is the importance of really addressing all the barriers, making sure that either state agencies have case management or work with community organizations to provide case management services and workshops in the community, making sure that those are accessible in different languages, making sure that they’re targeted really to the communities with the greatest needs.
(00:53:41):
Making sure we also think through other barriers. Not all community members have internet or stable internet. Folks who are elderly or dealing with learning disabilities might have a harder time filling out long application forms for incentive programs. So these are just some things that we need to think through if we really want these programs to be equitable and accessible. I’m going to skip over the wonderful VGI school bus project in the El Cajon Valley school district since Annabella spoke about this earlier. But this is an example of a really large scale VGI project in a community where at least the majority of the community would be considered an environmental justice community under the definition we’re using today. And then for me, the most important piece is really thinking through how we center equity. When we talk about equity, we want to talk about equitable outcomes and procedural equity.
(00:54:36):
We want to make sure that as far as equitable outcomes, we’re really bridging the gap and eliminating disparities based on class race, et cetera. But in terms of procedural equity, we also want to make sure that we have diverse voices at the table. We have local communities and grassroots voices at the table that we’re always asking ourselves if decision making bodies are inclusive of local residents, whether that’s in terms of racial diversity, class, gender, disability status, language skills, et cetera. I also want to remind us that California is a state with the highest percentage of immigrants and immigrants are under attack. So they’re also things to think about in terms of financial and legal issues the immigrant community is facing in having the tools to access some of these great programs. And I also want to acknowledge that while clean vehicles are essential to move our state forward, we also have to of course think about clean public transportation, active transportation, all the different ways that we can make sustainable transportation a reality.
(00:55:42):
Somewhere in here, oh, over here I have a picture of our daughter on a bike trying to learn how to practice active transportation. And in conclusion I’ll mention that we have some other CBE staff here who’ve worked a lot more in depth on power plant issues in case they wanted to jump into the q and a discussion as far as the issue of peaker plants. And I’m also sharing some resources, my email and the California Environmental Justice Alliances Principle bowls for clean transportation investments. And that’s a really great resource from an organization that represents 10 environmental justice organizations up and down the state that have come together and come up with principles for how we can really create equitable clean transportation solutions. Thank you very much.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (00:56:38):
Excellent. Thanks Maya. So at the top we said we’d do some moderated q and a first and then head to the audience. But because it’s the afternoon and we’re just going to freestyle a little bit, maybe straight to audience q and a, and if folks don’t have questions, we can do some moderat q and a. So any questions? I saw Ben’s hand shoot up in the corner of their first Ben. Go ahead. Ben
Speaker 1 (00:56:58):
Schwartz Clean Coalition A one is what advice give to a city that’s looking by a slightly different pool
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (00:57:25):
Can repeat the question too. Yeah,
Anna Bella Korbatov, Fermata Energy (00:57:29):
Okay. It’s on now. Okay. I think the question was you’re a city and interested in fleet electrification, where do you start? Is that right? Did I get that right? Are you particularly just electrification or integrating bi-directional charging solutions into your fleet electrification strategy? It could be both. Okay. How would you
Speaker 1 (00:57:54):
About both of those?
Anna Bella Korbatov, Fermata Energy (00:57:55):
Yeah. Well I think you would find a good fleet electrification consultant. No, but for, we’re A BGI services provider and in many ways we do help our partners in the industry, whether they’re school districts or municipalities, understand the challenges and opportunities of electrification and how to integrate bi-directional charging solutions. So I think first you have to start with what part of your fleet are you going to electrify and what vehicles could be compatible with bi-directional charging? So you need to keep in mind obviously all of these school bus projects that I spotlighted, that these vehicles are first and foremost there to provide mobility services to students.
(00:58:42):
What parts of your fleet can be converted to bi-directional? What parts of your fleet have flexibility in their duty cycle? Can you sacrifice some operational efficiencies? I think that’s key. I also mentioned upfront incentives. So really understanding comprehensively what incentives are out there at the local state, federal and utility level and how those can be stacked to bring down upfront costs. And what are your goals in fleet electrification? Are you responding to a mandate? Is this an internal desire to explore bi-directional charging solutions? I think where we come in is we help fleets understand how to monetize bi-directional charging and how to take in all sorts of very complicated constraints. So duty cycle constraints, maybe they’re on a flexible service connection, so they’re constrained on how much they can charge certain hours of the day, maybe they’ve accepted make ready funding so they’re on a time of use rate and have to also participate in a demand response program.
(00:59:56):
So we come in, we take in all those constraints and we can optimize and create a charge and discharge plan that will allow, for example, a municipal fleet or a school district meet their operational needs but also maximize V two G revenue. And it’s tough balancing all of those very conflictual constraints, but that’s where our VDX or VGI algorithms come into place. I will mention we did a project with the city of Boulder, Colorado. It was a very small scale pilot. They installed one for MA energy FE 15 bidirectional charger, paired it with an Nissan Leaf, and it was providing demand charge management on their North Boulder recreation center. And when the car wasn’t plugged in to provide services to the building, it was available for use by the city employees. So that’s like a very small scale example of how we’re using a pilot to learn what can be done. But those are some of the considerations I would note. And sorry, I know my answer was very long, but I hope that was helpful.
Vincent Weyl, California Energy Commission (01:01:00):
Sure. I just want to add one point. It’s to plan possible for the long term. And what I mean by that is if you can mutualize some costs, every clean energy project as a high upfront cost. So for example, if you’re deploying an EV charging infrastructure, regardless of whether it’s bidirectional or not, you will probably have to deal with the utility upgrades. You’ll have to deal with some civil work like trenching. And this is not something you want to repeat five years from now because you have to add two or three or five chargers. So I think it’s very important to have a long-term plan and try to anticipate infrastructure costs to support his long-term plan. And then you may add vehicles, you may add charges to the fleet later on, but at least you have the infrastructure ready.
Maya Iñigo–Anderson, Communities for a Better Envi (01:01:45):
I don’t have much to add other than it’d be important to figure out what are the areas with the greatest transportation need in the city. So assuming that it’s not just city employee vehicles, but a broader project, something that has worked in a lot of environmental justice communities in California is EV car share because it’s relatively low cost, whether it’s bi-directional or not. Obviously it would be great if there’s a bi-directional aspect, but EV car share is a very affordable way that people can get from A to B without having a major carbon footprint.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (01:02:25):
And I just quickly add, and I hesitate to say this because large investor owned utilities are not always great at things, but in California they do typically offer what they call transportation electrification advisory services to customers that are looking to electrify and asking that question, where do we start? What do we do? And they do have funding and staff dedicated to answering those questions for customers. And as far as I can tell, it’s working relatively well. And again, caveating that large investor and utilities are usually not the best place to help customers frankly. But in this case, I think it may be a good place to start as well. I saw another hand pop up. Yes, gentlemen in the front.
Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
I’m curious about impact just by comparison using vehicle battery or use. Is that true?
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (01:04:06):
You take the question. Yeah, sorry. The question is how does using a bi-directional charging application, bless you, have an impact on your vehicle warranty and your battery warranty. And I think there’s really astute observation that for example, every year with your insurance you have to fill out how many miles you drove. What does it mean to be doing bi-directional charging or sort of these virtual miles on your battery and what impact does that have on your warranty? And also who pays for that to make that up? So I dunno, Vincent Veo,
Vincent Weyl, California Energy Commission (01:04:39):
Answer, I can start. So there’s not one single answer to that. The warranty is first and foremost an offer by the manufacturer. There are regulations pertaining to warranty including in carbs, ACC two that deals with warranty related to excessive VGI use of the battery. That’s the way it’s worded, that’s in discussion. So there’s not a given answer right now. We’ve been looking at body of research that tends to show that VGI uses of the battery is actually good for the health of the battery, the state of health provided, of course you operate within a 20 to 80% state of charge. So you don’t do anything crazy, but cycling the battery actually helps maintain the state of health of the battery for longer duration rather than having it sit idle. So that’s encouraging. But again, the warranty decision, ultimately it’s a manufacturer’s decision. What they want to offer again might be constrained by regulation.
(01:05:32):
But I can give you an example which is striking to me. It’s in Europe. So the constructor Renault has launched a Reno five electric and they have an offer at the dealership. You can go get your car drive away from the dealership with a car and an electricity contract with V2G services. This manufacturers come on the record saying that they support bidirectional at no increasing cost of the vehicle, no increasing cost of the charger that they provide alongside and no impact on the warranty, meaning it’s the same warranty as regular use of the electric vehicle. Again, it’s not a 10 year, I think it’s what a hundred thousand miles as might be required by car, but at least it’s from a commercial offer perspective, they can go away with that. So again, I don’t have a definitive answer to you, right? It’s not clear on the regulation where we’ll end up. It’s also not clear what the OEMs will offer. The only thing I can mention to you is that there’s a body of research that says that BGI use case is not detrimental to the battery’s health.
Anna Bella Korbatov, Fermata Energy (01:06:32):
Thank you Vincent. I’ll add to that. A lot of that will echo what Vincent just shared. So there are a lot of studies looking at this for, we’ve looked at a study coming out of the University of Warwick in 2017 and then a followup study in 2021. And there’s a lot more research the past couple of years on the fact that if BGI or V two G discharge is done within a managed ecosystem or with a BGI services provider partner like Vermont Energy or any of the other BGI services providers out there and you’re not deep cycling the battery, it can actually be beneficial. And so we actually our B two X platform, so our software paired with our hardware received approval from Nissan, that’s one of our OEM partners, that it would not void the battery warranty if a customer were to purchase our charter with our software with the Nissan vehicle.
(01:07:28):
And they were adhering to the certain charge and discharge parameters set by our software that they could stay within their warranty requirements. And so our system received certification in both of our systems. So we have a 15 kilowatt charger and a 20 kilowatt chargers. So twice we’ve worked with Nissan. And so that’s one example of how you can do it. You can have BGI services providers entering into these bilateral agreements with auto OEMs or you can have what’s maybe happening in Europe, which is probably much more forward thinking and they seem to be ahead of us on that. But it is a concern. But there are many ways this is being addressed and the research is showing that it actually can be beneficial to your overall long-term battery health.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (01:08:22):
Just to augment the very last part of your question too was around who pays for that, right? If there is wear and tear in the battery over time, even if it’s from driving or vehicle to road, we were joking last week at another event V two R, so I don’t know how much I personally want to help my utilities, pg EI dunno how much I want to help them out of the goodness of my own heart. But if they were to pay me for my electrons and exporting the grid, that changes the calculus a little bit. So that might really help to offset some of the costs of the upfront equipment of engaging with third parties and all the other costs that might come with this. It needs to, I think Annabell used the term pencil earlier. That’s it. Cool. I saw a hand over there. Go for it.
Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
It is beautiful and I imagine really expensive. A lot of people that can afford that probably aren’t electric bill. I wonder if there’s anywhere of really encouraging car manufacturers to have bidirectional for the thousand dollars card, 95,000 car and also this an apartment building home at night plugging into a parking garage and saying, here, you can use my energy too, or your buses, but on opposed to a fleet.
(01:10:01):
There were two questions. Cheap cars and people that aren’t associated with a fleet or anything going on.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (01:10:08):
So V two G for cheap cars and people not associated with a fleet or in multifamily.
Anna Bella Korbatov, Fermata Energy (01:10:13):
Yeah. Yes. Did you want to go first?
(01:10:16):
I’ll mention that I covered school bus projects, but most of Vermont Energy’s work since we started launching our pilots in 2019 was with the Nissan Leaf. So it is a much more affordable vehicle. I mean there’s still a cost difference between a nice vehicle and a Nissan Leaf, but it’s not the Cadillac that you mentioned. So you can get a leaf maybe for 32 to 40 K. So that’s one example. The reason we chose the leaf is it’s affordable, it’s an accessible vehicle, but it also was using the chato charging standard, which at the time readily enabled bi-directional charging. We’ve now moved to CCS and for energy supports CCS charging now for bi-directional use cases and N is going to now probably enable bi-directional charging. There’s work on that, but I’ll just mention that. Yes, there is the leaf, there are other vehicles. Now you guys can probably mention the whole slate.
Vincent Weyl, California Energy Commission (01:11:20):
So I think 10 days from GM has left the room, but my question to her is why didn’t you bring the Equinox or the Blazer, which are both bidirectional, capable and much more affordable than the Cadillac. Again, that’s as a brand, you want to market to the best, but yes, not necessarily the most affordable. The example I gave from Europe, that’s a 25,000, it starts at 25,000 euros. So it is doable to make affordable and even 25,000, it’s still a higher upfront cost. So we need a secondhand market that develops et cetera, but it’s doable. And then I did mention the EVs as DER funding where we want to help reduce the cost of V two X. This is a citation that’s open to OEM that are developing and designing new technology that aims at lowering the cost both on the vehicle and on the equipment to make this more affordable. So that’s to answer your first question.
Zach Woogen, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council (01:12:12):
Yeah. And again, Candace is in the room, but my understanding of why they brought the S lead is they were going to do a giveaway for the car, whoever had the best audience q and a, so whoever had the best audience q and a, I don’t know, that’s subjective, I guess. So we’ll have to tell Candace that I am bullying her like that. Well thank you all for your excellent questions and thank you to our panelists for providing all the information today. Thank you.
Kurt Johnson, The Climate Center (01:12:40):
And happy hour. The reception, I should say, it starts at five 15 and it’s two floors up, so you’re going to have to take a couple of flights of stairs. Thanks everyone for coming to the policy summit. Have a glass of wine. Oh, it’s going to be the award ceremony as well for Senator Limon.