I went to today's hearing.
RE: How to incentivize EVs through MA's rate structure.
Represented: Nat Grid, NSTAR/Northeast Utilities and Chargepoint (among others).
Topics:
-Peak and Off-peak pricing, as in standard binary TOU rates
-Peak and Off-peak pricing, as in new TVR, or Time Value Rates
They didn't really get into commercial, destination, or highway charging. This was mostly a residential discussion, on how to get to 300,000EVs. The utilities want "AMI", or smart metering, which will enable more detailed time interval pricing. This is good to capture each hour of peak and off-peak rates. They also want demand charges. I didn't feel like the only EV, or environmental, person in the room, but did speak when it came to what I sensed was happening. The short of it seems to be their argument that TOU rates don't really work as well as AMI, and that, as they argued, the demand charges that AMI would enable could be structured to rebate back money to EV owners. To get it, the idea would be to restrict, say a Tesla (not their example) to 5kw rather than 10kw during the day. No talk of V2G, here, just what an EV owner would be owed for being willing to reduce their load during the day. -this is effectively a demand charge in reverse, or demand response.
Sorry if this is confusing, but what I worry is going on is a revenue adder to the utilities. On the one hand, smart meters can be an installation profit center. Like a cable box, there was talk of "$15/mo for the modem cost". There was talk of separate EV meters (liked by the DPU, who wants to artificially push cheaper EV rates). There's the hardware cost. Then, there's the prospect of demand charges, which gets into a Pandora's box.
As described above, the idea of having your Tesla pull 5kw, instead of 10kw during the day, is on the table as creating a "credit" to your account. Where AMI can sound scary, to EV and solar users, is in its ability to capture your peak kw use. This isn't kwh, mind you. It's your instantaneous load spikes, whether pulling or sending watts. Residential power pricing very rarely includes a "demand charge". That day may have to end, as the legitimate argument from the utility perspective goes something like this: Picture a home with, say, 200amp service, an 80amp twin charged Tesla and a 25kw solar system, all pushing watts around at peak sun (I dunno, call it 2PM). We think in terms of kw HOURS and things netting out, but there's a wire load component that can require additional equipment. It's a hot topic in U.S., right now, and clearly a target point of utilities. Net metering doesn't capture instantaneous wire load. It has other shortfalls I won't get into, which disadvantage the solar owner. The ones that disadvantage the utility are the portal through which this type of metering could become more common. You'd have a normal, cumulative kwh bill, but then a charge added on depending upon how close you got to your maximal 200amp service. What makes these charges scary is that they are typically layered on top of all of the kwh's billed. Example, a 10 cent kwh could see a 1.5 cent demand charge, if during one simple minute in an entire month, you were drawing 25kw. At a 40kw minute, they might add 3 cents across the whole bill, etc.
I hope this makes sense. Corrections welcome.
I was the guy who pushed Nat Grid on its policy of restricting residential TOU to its >2,500kwh per month customers, more or less arguing that was an exclusionary threshold. The utility was trying to make the case that TOU was unsuccessfully subscribed. C'mon guys, maybe there aren't that many, but with how hard it has become to simply read a utility bill, should we be surprised if buying nighttime electricity isn't as popular as, say, $2 gas after 9PM would be???
