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Hundreds of billions of dollars of public money may soon infuse the electric vehicle market. President Joe Biden plans to invest $174 billion over 10 years, and Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes spending $1.5 billion in his 2021-22 state budget.

In addition, the California Energy Commission detailed April 13 a $50 million project to accelerate the deployment of zero-emission truck and bus fueling infrastructure, particularly in communities overburdened by heavy vehicle pollution. This latest round of CEC funding is on top of the millions of dollars California has invested in EVs and charging stations over the last several years.

How much new money is actually invested in electric vehicles and charging stations in California remains to be seen. So too is how much the investments green the grid and slash air and climate pollution. That depends on two things: whether vehicle charging can be shifted to times when renewable supplies are surging, and whether vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home power go mainstream in California.

Vehicle-to-grid and to building technology can help balance the ebb and flow of resources during intense heat, high demand, and wildfires.

Smart charging

The importance of powering up vehicles when lots of sun and wind power is being generated—so called “smart charging”—has been stressed for years. But many of the vehicle charging stations installed and slated for installation in homes and public locations allow so-called dumb charging: taking power from the grid at times of high demand, after the sun sets and more fossil power is being generated.

Source: California Energy Commission

The necessity of charging with excess renewable energy is growing as California strives to meet its goal of 5 million EVs in the state by 2030.

There have been a number of smart charging projects aimed at preventing harm to California’s grid. The latest is Pacific Gas & Electric’s expansion of its partnership with BMW Group and its customers to charge electric vehicles with excess renewable energy to support reliability, putting the electricity to good use instead of wasting it through curtailments.

The utility works with BMW to send signals to BMW owners via an app to encourage them to charge when the sun is high. Drivers may opt out, PG&E spokesperson Ari Vanrenen said.

Drivers earn $150 at sign-up and about an additional $250 per year for responding to the signals to charge during the day. “During the spring and fall months, program participants could earn incentives that offset the entire cost of charging their vehicle, charging 750 miles per month with clean electricity at no cost, at times of excess renewables that support the grid,” according to PG&E.

About 3,000 EV drivers are expected to take part in PG&E’s just expanded Charge Forward Program. That is a ten-fold scale up of the program’s Phase Two.

In Phase Two, the “vehicle pool represented a flexible resource size of 1.9 MW, based on the charging capacity at the homes of drivers,” Vanrenen told Current. Using incentives resulted in a 155% increase in daytime charging in the Fall 2018. And in the 2019-20 winter, 83% of drivers met curtailment requirements, she added.

This is a step in the right direction. So too are electric vehicles that allow the one-way flow of power for charging to be adjusted up or down in accordance with signals from installed communication software. But bigger steps are needed to address the climate crisis and loss of power during worsening wildfires.

Vehicle-to-Grid can enhance grid services

Having power flow into and out of electric vehicles using software will create a more efficient and reliable grid given the right regulations and incentives.

Bidirectional vehicle-to-grid technology can help improve renewable integration and avoid transmission upgrades, Bjoern Christensen, Next Dimensions managing director, said. Next Dimension consults on vehicle to grid and building projects and deployments.

He also noted that car, bus, and truck batteries can be used to directly power homes and community centers during wildfires and earthquakes. “It is not about making money but helping California in its existential crisis,” with EVs able to power islanded homes for two days or more, according to Christensen.

Electric cars can store and supply about 60 kW hours and buses 100 kWh or more.

A bidirectional EV also could discharge power at homes during peak usage, from 5-9 PM, helping flatten peak demand, ease stress on the grid and save vehicle owners money. But needed regulations are missing in action in California.

“An EV battery is a terrible thing to waste only on transportation,” Christensen said.

Bidirectional vehicle batteries

The potential of vehicle-to-grid technology has been talked about for at least a decade. Several projects have been testing the flow of power between electric car batteries and the grid and distribution system, as well as to buildings.

There are electric vehicle fleets that already send and absorb power from the grid in response to signals. Fleets in Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and UK, in partnership with Nuvve Corp. are doing just that. Nuvve is a San Diego based company, which went public recently, that develops vehicle-to-grid and building software technology.

Here in California however, a state that prides itself on being a leader in green energy, V2G is moving as slow as molasses.

The state is way behind the V2G curve

“California is amazingly behind the V2G curve,” Willett Kempton, University of Delaware professor and Nuvve cofounder said.

PG&E still treats the technology as novel. The company said as part of its expanded smart charging program, it will collaborate "in a lab setting to explore the potential for future vehicle technologies to further support the grid by testing vehicle-to-grid functionalities."

“The investor-owned utilities are really good at announcing pilots,” Marc Trahand, Nuvve spokesperson, noted.

That is not surprising given that vehicles charging the grid or home will cut into the private utilities’ bottom lines.

Since 2007, the University of Delaware has been running a vehicle-to-grid program, which sells regulation services to PJM. Nuvve has aggregated the load since 2016. Participating car owners now reap about $100 a month. The program is being expanded from 16 charging stations and 12 stationary batteries to 42 stations, with a maximum supply of 0.75 MW to the grid. The services being supplied to the grid are being expanded to include other ancillary services, such as spinning reserves and capacity, Willett said.

Nuvve also has launched pilot projects with San Diego Gas & Electric and the University of California San Diego, with California Energy Commission funding. One helped power UCSD during last August’s intense heatwave, reducing load on the grid by providing power to the campus.

V2G barriers

Key changes are needed to advance the vehicle-to-grid market in California: adoption of AC bidirectional international charging standards (IEC 15118-20) and AC bidirectional vehicle regulation, and adequate incentives for grid services provided.

Many but not all the V2G parts are there.

Two-way DC vehicle charging is a proven technology. It has been used in Japan since 2013.

But AC charging is not yet prime time and California has not fully developed regulations for it.

A key issue is getting car manufacturers and the utilities on the same page with AC inverters in vehicles. Car makers don’t want the investor-owned utilities telling them what to do in their vehicles and the utilities need to secure a reliable power supply into California’s system. There is an ongoing working group commissioned by the California Public Utilities Commission striving to resolve the issue.

Christensen expects the working group to resolve the issue by the end of the year.

Adequate payments for grid services also are crucial because it helps bring the cost of EVs down. While cost parity between electric cars and gas-powered cars is within reach, larger electric vehicles are considerably more costly.

An electric bus, for example, costs $350,000, while a polluting diesel bus about $150,000.

“Getting paid for grid services helps close the gap,” Trahand said. Nuvve launched two electric bus programs in California, one with six V2G buses in Torrance and another in Rialto in San Bernardino County using eight bidirectional buses.

According to PG&E, the more than 320,000 electric vehicles plugging into its electric grid can contribute to California’s clean energy future. “As EV adoption continues to grow, the potential for these clean vehicles as a flexible grid resource becomes more significant,” Quinn Nakayama, PG&E director of Integrated Grid Planning and Innovation, said.

If California regulators adopt the necessary regulations, vehicle-to-grid technology should take off in about a year or two. Christensen pointed to VW just announcing that its 2023 model EVs will be fully bidirectional.