Flexible charging can help the UK grid accommodate 60% more EVs—and make them even cleaner

Electric vehicles (EVs) are more efficient and less polluting than comparable rides powered by traditional internal combustion engines—even when EVs are charged on relatively dirty grids; plus, the greener that grids get with renewables, the cleaner EVs get with their associated emissions.

But there’s been the nagging question of whether, as sales continue to ramp up, EVs could become too much of a good thing for the power grid. For example, after 1.1 million new electric vehicles hit the roads globally in 2017, Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts that worldwide annual EV sales will hit 11 million by 2025 and 30 million by 2030. Can the electricity grid handle the coming wave of EVs and all the charging—some slow, some fast, and some superfast—that will come along with it?

A 2018 study from the UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) found reason for optimism—assuming that mass EV uptake comes hand-in-hand with intelligent charging systems. Ofgem found that “smart, flexible” charging solutions could allow at least 60% more EVs to connect to the existing UK power grid than would be the case without intelligent charging systems. With flexible fast charging, up to six times more EVs could connect, the authors found.

That’s possible, Ofgem says, because unlike inflexible EV charging—which blindly fills a big battery from the time it’s plugged in until it’s either topped off or the plug is pulled—flexible EV charging pays some attention to what’s happening beyond the outlet.

Charging flexibility makes all the difference

Inflexible EV charging, the authors say, increases peak demand, risks local outages, reduces system diversity, constrains areas that are already constrained, and forces all energy consumers to pay for new electrical infrastructure needed because of the added demand of EV owners.

Flexible EV charging, on the other hand, lowers the increase in peak demand, enables the more efficient use of existing assets, improves system diversity, defers or avoids power-infrastructure expansion, and can reward consumers—in pounds and pence (or dollars and cents, on this side of the Atlantic)—for their flexibility.

That’s a lot of cons and pros, but the big one has to do with peak demand. Depending on when peak demand occurs, and—more importantly—what power plants are called upon to meet that demand (often an expensive, polluting, fossil-burning peaker plant), there could be big implications for marginal grid emissions that risk casting a bit of a cloud over the clean EV story.

Keep in mind that the above doesn’t take into account vehicle-to-grid technology, which could harness EVs as a stored energy source, tapping into parked cars rather than peaking plants. For example, a Tesla Model 3 battery stores four to five times more electricity than a Tesla Powerwall battery. And overall, EVs that charge using a 240-volt outlet draw about as much power as six microwave ovens running simultaneously. Then imagine all that energy and capacity at coordinated scale. “As a pooled resource, the growing number of EV batteries could provide a wider range of valuable grid services, from demand response and voltage regulation to distribution-level services, without compromising driving experience or capabilities,” the Ofgem team explains.

How flexible charging unlocks greater grid value—while reducing emissions

Closer to home, the U.S. Department of Energy’s INTEGRATE study has estimated that with 3 million EVs—half of them using flexible charging and EV batteries as energy storage—peak demand would fall 1.5 percent. You read that right: adding 3 million electric cars could cut peak demand. Electricity costs would decline by 1 percent to 3 percent. In addition, renewable-energy curtailment would shrink by 25 percent and overall grid emissions could shrink, too.

That last bit about renewable energy curtailment and grid emissions is vitally important. Curtailment means wasting renewable energy that would otherwise be generated because the grid can’t accommodate it at a particular time.

Renewable energy’s contribution to the grid can change minute-by-minute. So, when we consider how to do smart, flexible charging of EVs for the optimization of power delivery, we should be asking not just if and how the grid can handle that demand but also what sources of generation are on the margin and/or at risk of curtailment at any point in time. In other words, how can smart, flexible EV charging help electricity grids from the UK to the U.S. not only handle more EVs but potentially do so while lowering their marginal emissions by charging at times of cleaner energy and avoid times of dirtier energy.

This sits squarely in the sweet spot of WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology. The software—including a recently updated EV charging module—uses a combination of real-time grid conditions and historical emissions data to track the precise mix of renewable and fossil energy coursing through a device such as an EV charger, in 5-minute increments.

This is especially important when it comes to EVs and marginal emissions. Yes, we can measure EV emissions based on overall grid mix in a particular region. But what arguably matters much more is marginal emissions. When I plug in my EV to charge (or unplug my EV to drive away), what power plant turns on or off in response to that demand? And can we ensure—through a combination of smart, flexible charging and the right signal, such as AER—that EVs are using as much clean energy as possible while avoiding dirty energy?

With the kind of smart, flexible charging envisioned in the UK Ofgem report and WattTime’s AER technology, the answer is yes. And that’s as big a story, we’d argue, as the UK grid being able to handle 60% more EVs.

As we ‘electrify everything,’ an opportunity for deeper, faster decarbonization

The last quarter of 2018 saw the release of several major climate change reports that all came to similarly dire conclusions, reinforcing the call to action to decarbonize the global economy as deeply and rapidly as possible. One major lever for doing so comes down to two words: “electrify everything.”

The punchline is this: As the percentage of renewables powering our grid continues to grow, electricity generation becomes cleaner and, by default, so does everything that uses electricity, from transportation to buildings.

In a 2018 analysis, The Economics of Electrifying Buildings, nonprofit think-and-do tank Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) took a closer look at the “electricity everything” concept, exploring the financial and carbon impacts of electrifying commonly fossil-fueled residential energy loads such as space and water heating. (Disclosure: WattTime is an RMI subsidiary.)

RMI’s deep dive accounts for several factors when weighing the potential economic and carbon impacts of electrification: the degree of demand flexibility, electrification’s applicability for new homes versus retrofits, differing utility rate structures across the country, the wide variability in seasonal temperatures and grid mix, for a few examples.

The report, which is worth the full read, ultimately concludes that electrification is the most cost-effective option for many, but not all, home space and water heating use cases. For example, in the most coal-heavy regions of the country, the switch is not yet beneficial. RMI expects that the outlook for many scenarios explored will improve in the near future, as more renewables come online and electric appliances become more cost-competitive.

Marginal emissions are the key to overall emissions reductions through electrification, especially for achieving deeper reductions sooner

Those coal-heavy dark shadows in the report serve as a reminder of the important practice of looking at marginal emissions when considering the effects of electrification: As we electrify more and more energy loads, we’re also, in theory, increasing demand on the grid and asking more power plants to “turn on” in response. These “marginal” plants — whether powered by solar, wind, natural gas, or coal — can produce wildly different levels of carbon emissions, which we refer to as “marginal emissions.” And it’s those emissions that must be considered as we analyze the impact of electrification in various regions and scenarios.

This topic sits at the center of WattTime’s expertise. Through our research, we’ve successfully illuminated where and how the grid sources electricity for marginal electricity demand at any moment of the day, and then quantified the resulting emissions. This data became the key underpinning to RMI’s electrification report.

Moreover, this understanding of marginal emissions is also the foundation of WattTime’s core technology, which makes smart devices even smarter. Our software sends a signal to grid-connected devices like smart thermostats and electric vehicles (EVs) to tell them exactly when to kick into gear to effortlessly choose times of cleaner over dirtier energy. This simple-yet-effective solution has become known as “Automated Emissions Reduction” (AER).

Electrification, demand flexibility, and AER can unlock a lower-carbon future

As investment in renewables advances at record pace and clean sources of energy function alongside dirtier options, the power of this duality is revealing itself. Thanks to solutions like WattTime’s and the growth of smart device alternatives, the option to “electrify everything” is more enticing by the day. With thermostats, EV chargers, refrigerators, and more, the argument that more electricity demand must equal more emissions becomes invalid if and when a solution like AER is used. 

While it’s true that widespread energy efficiency upgrades will also play an important role in our progress toward emissions reductions, we cannot afford to ignore the opportunity presented by electrification, demand flexibility, and AER technology. These three pieces of the puzzle can work hand in hand to effortlessly, seamlessly, and automatically reduce emissions and move us closer to our decarbonization goals.

WattTime is proud to support important research in the cleantech space that will further enable our electricity grid’s monumental transition away from fossil-fueled energy. Every day we strive to give power to people and businesses that want the option to use cleaner energy. By partnering with innovators at like-minded organizations like Rocky Mountain Institute, we can work together to allow energy users worldwide to make a complicated choice much simpler.

Amidst climate change concerns, we can't afford to forget about mercury emissions: just ask the Great Lakes

In the unfolding story of the climate crisis and the battle to avert its worst effects, carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions play a starring role in much media coverage, and rightfully so. But there’s another, lesser-discussed villain that deserves our attention, too: mercury. These emissions are also released in the process of burning coal for electricity and pose a serious human health hazard. And while the US overall is making impressive strides in installing new wind and solar while retiring coal-fired generation, there’s still a lot of legacy coal in the system. This holds true for the Great Lakes region of the country, where coal consumption is still fairly high, even as states make exciting clean energy commitments. This region has felt the effects of mercury contamination more than any other in the country. That’s why the Great Lakes Protection Fund (GLPF) is supporting a team of energy and tech experts to unleash a business-minded solution leveraging the power of technology. WattTime, alongside demand response program administrators, Midwest utilities and a smart thermostat maker, will be deploying Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) to reduce mercury emissions. Don’t worry, we’ll explain. Coal plants and mercury emissions: an insidious duo As far as environmental health hazards go, mercury is right up there with the best (or worst) of them. And coal-fired power plants, which deposit about 50 million tons of coal ash per year into surrounding bodies of water, are some of the largest emitters of all. As mercury makes its way into our water, it’s consumed by fish and then bioaccumulates and becomes more potent to those higher up the food chain (like you and me). In large enough doses, it can cause serious harm to the nervous and reproductive systems, and in some cases even death. This is all to say, you’d probably rather have a side of tartar sauce with your fish and chips than even a droplet of mercury. A simple—and effective—regulatory solution slipping through our fingers Recognizing the urgent need to protect the public from this destructive coal byproduct, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implemented a regulation in 2011 to reduce mercury emissions: The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS). Under the new rule, coal plants were required to install highly effective mercury emissions control technology. Between 2011 and 2017, we saw an 81 percent decrease in emissions from power plants. WattTime’s detailed mercury emissions data supports these numbers — the almost instantaneous drop off was unlike anything caused by previous EPA guidelines. Problem solved, right? Until now. Under the current administration, the EPA has proposed a measure to seriously weaken or even potentially repeal the MATS rule. And because mercury control technology is expensive to keep running, it’s highly likely that many plants would discontinue using it without a requirement. In a worst-case-scenario horror story—which is not impossible here—mercury emissions could increase up to tenfold overnight. WattTime teams up with Great Lakes Protection Fund to tackle mercury emissions As is becoming more common with the pace of innovation today, there’s an intelligent tech solution waiting in the wings should policy fail us, and that’s where AER enters the story. With the support of a grant from the GLPF, WattTime is leading a team to pilot its emissions reduction technology in the Great Lakes region to tackle the problem. Here’s how it will work: With WattTime’s real-time data on which power plants are “on the margin” and responding to new electricity demand at any given moment, we’re able to pinpoint when either coal plants or renewable sources are kicking into gear. Our software, when installed in any internet-connected smart device like an electric vehicle charger or smart thermostat, can automatically shift that device’s energy use to cleaner times of day.  This shift to clean energy leads to a decrease in carbon and other harmful emissions, including mercury. The number of devices in the Great Lakes region that could potentially leverage AER software is massive, and if just under half of them used the technology, we could do away with 269 pounds per year of mercury emissions. (To put that in perspective, just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury thrown into a 25-acre lake can make the fish dangerous to consume.) The last piece of the puzzle: demand response programs While AER technology is simple, inexpensive and highly effective, it still requires a pathway to widespread adoption. So, WattTime is working with demand response (DR) programs in the Great Lakes region to jumpstart its use. Over 100 DR programs in the region financially incentivize people and businesses to shift their electricity use away from peak electricity demand times. For example, a power company may have the ability to cycle a customer’s HVAC system on and off during peak load times in exchange for lowering that customer’s electric bill. But many programs have struggled with their appeal to customers. Adding AER to the offering has a twofold benefit for DR programs: a) The new perk can boost enrollment and, b) The technology provides value all day, every day of the year. While a 2016 multi-million dollar campaign by DR programs to improve participation only persuaded five percent of customers to accept it, WattTime’s analysis has shown that the chance to have a positive environmental impact is actually enormously attractive to consumers. WattTime’s AER programs, which offer no financial incentive, delivered 40 percent uptake in our first pilot and even reached 82 percent uptake by our third project implementation. (By comparison, the 2017 average participation rate in energy management programs like DR was only 17 percent.) Besides its capability to improve enrollment numbers, pairing AER with DR makes customer participation valuable 365 days a year, not just during occasional peak demand events. This is because the “marginal” power plant in a given region can change as often as every few minutes. To achieve maximum emissions reductions, AER functions continuously in the background making small fluctuations in energy usage throughout each day, every day. Even though DR and AER function independently, smart devices are perfectly capable of taking part in DR and AER simultaneously to deliver both environmental and cost benefits to customers year round. WattTime plans to work with utilities and DR aggregators in the Great Lakes region as part of a team to deploy large numbers of smart devices programmed with our AER software. By using these devices, consumers can essentially choose to give more of their electricity business to cleaner power plants as opposed to coal-fired plants that are worsening the mercury crisis. Providing an additional market signal to keep mercury pollution out of the air (and land and water) In the United States, power plants are called upon (and paid) to supply electricity via a dispatch stack system that ranks and orders plants by cost. And if mercury-emitting plants become less competitive with low- or zero-emitting plants — causing the cost of the power they supply to increase — they may get bumped out of that dispatch stack. This would have two major benefits: a) It avoids the direct emissions from their increased use. But more importantly, b) It provides a strong economic incentive for those power plants to keep running their MATS-compliance technology to avoid being deprioritized. Thanks to WattTime’s real-time data on marginal power plants, AER is capable of easily and automatically signaling when cleaner power is on the grid. When devices with flexible demand shift their energy use based on the AER signal, it dictates which power plants are called upon—and paid—to provide additional electricity. While direct mercury emissions reduction numbers are promising (our analysis shows an average of 16 percent reduction across all smart devices with flexible demand), it’s the indirect effect of using AER software that could create a substantial market transformation; consumers will shift significant amounts of energy demand from high-emitting plants to low-emitting plants. With one simple and effective solution, WattTime and the GLPF have their eyes set on the ultimate prize: reducing mercury emissions while also inspiring the cleanup of the entire generator fleet of the region. Stay tuned for more updates in 2019 as we work toward a happier ending for the mercury emissions story.

Mercury pollution regulations are under threat—how it could play out

As the end of 2018 draws nearer, headlines are once again starting to crop up about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—under the current White House administration—considering significant rollbacks of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) regulations, possibly even setting the stage for a full repeal.

This could be an unmitigated tragedy. In its short life—announced in 2011, implemented in 2012, and compliance required by 2015/2016—MATS has emerged as one of the single most-effective regulations in American history for protecting human health and the environment, especially from the ravages of mercury exposure.

Over the past half century, myriad regulations have been heralded for their role drastically reducing the harmful effects from known toxic pollutants: removing lead from gasoline and paint, removing arsenic from drinking water. MATS is of a similar echelon when it comes to drastically reducing mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The resounding success of MATS: 86% mercury emissions reductions

An analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP) found a 65% nationwide reduction in annual power plant mercury emissions during the three-year period 2014–2017. Since 2011, CAP finds an 82% drop.

WattTime also crunched the numbers for eight states throughout the Great Lakes region across a similar time period (2014–2018) and found even more striking results: an 86% reduction in mercury emissions. Perhaps just as importantly, these significant emissions reductions were not via a gradual decline over those years. Mercury emissions essentially fell off a cliff. Pre-MATS and post-MATS mercury emissions were night and day. In other words, the regulations were highly effective.

A victory for human health and the environment is at risk

Mercury’s profoundly negative health effects are well-known: it ranks on the World Health Organization’s top 10 list of chemicals that pose a major public health concern. It’s the economic tally of those health effects—and their subsequent impact on the U.S. economy—partly at the heart of the MATS controversy.

Environmental regulations like MATS are generally evaluated on the cost for industry to comply with the regulation vs. the dollar-value benefit (e.g., healthcare costs, economic productivity) the regulation delivers. Mercury emissions-reducing technology is not cheap. It costs the electric utility industry an estimated $9.6 billion per year to comply, prompting the New York Times to label it “the most expensive clean air regulation ever put forth by the federal government.” Some proponents of MATS argue that the cost of compliance is actually far less than the $9.6 billion estimate. But regardless, MATS compliance is relatively expensive.

On the other side of the coin is the economic value of the human health and environmental benefits MATS delivers. Original federal estimates put the direct mercury-reduction benefits at less than $10 million annually. Such meager numbers have generally been widely debunked. Harvard University’s School of Public Health notes that “mercury-related benefits from MATS are orders of magnitude larger than previously estimated,” on the scale of several billion dollars per year. Meanwhile, both the original federal estimates and subsequent third-party review estimate indirect co-benefits at a whopping $24–$80 billion annually, since mercury-related MATS-compliance technologies also reduce other harmful pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

If MATS is significantly weakened or repealed, mercury emissions are at risk of jumping up

Whether the true cost to run MATS compliance technology is $9.6 billion or something else, the fact is there remains a cost associated with the tech. Part of that expense is sunk upfront capital cost to install the technologies in the first place and part is ongoing operational costs to keep MATS-compliance technologies running.

Many utilities and other stakeholders have argued that the electricity sector broadly has already invested in these technologies, so there’s no sense going back to a pre-MATS world. To a degree, that’s true. But undoubtedly, coal-fired generators will have economic incentives to turn off their mercury emissions-reducing tech in a bid to reduce costs and stay more price-competitive.

If they do, the grid’s mercury emissions could rocket back up closer to their pre-MATS levels. For our part, WattTime will be watching. With our unique algorithms and near-real-time insights into grid emissions, we’ll be one of the first to know.

Possible pathways in a MATS (or post-MATS) future

There’s of course a big fork in the road looming just ahead, obscured by the fog of EPA uncertainty: either MATS continues in existence largely resembling its current form or MATS shrinks to a shadow of its former self, possibly disappearing entirely. If the latter—and legal challenges to its dissolution not withstanding—all is not necessarily lost.

WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology could potentially step in to do what an eviscerated MATS couldn’t. AER focuses in particular on marginal generators, those power plants “on the margin” of the dispatch curve that turn on or off in response to rising and falling electricity demand.

For customers passively using electricity, that all happens invisibly in the background of grid operations. But with smart devices controlling flexible electricity loads—thermostats, batteries, electric vehicles, electric water heaters, etc.—customers can start shifting the timing of their electricity demand to proactively turn marginal generators on or off, like a light switch for the electricity grid. And if we knew which power plants were on the margin when, we could start applying customer-driven criteria to the smart devices to effect specific outcomes, such as using more renewable energy and avoiding more fossil-fueled energy, or reducing marginal carbon and other GHG emissions, or—in the case of MATS—avoiding those generators with higher mercury emissions.

AER is the solution that delivers on this promise. In a (hopefully hypothetical) post-MATS world, AER could prove a powerful tool for avoiding mercury emissions in two critical ways:

First, direct implementation of AER on smart devices could shift electricity demand to avoid marginal generators with high mercury emissions rates and use more electricity during times when marginal generators are mercury emissions-free. According to WattTime analysis, attacking marginal mercury emissions in this way could reduce annual energy-related mercury emissions in the Great Lakes region by a meaningful 16% if AER were adopted at scale.

Second, broad customer adoption of AER could provide a strong market signal for fossil-fueled power plants to keep their MATS-compliance technologies running. With the United States’ merit order dispatch stack for electricity generators, a given power plant only provides power—and, importantly, only gets paid—if it’s part of the dispatch stack. Thus there’s strong incentive to stay in the stack.

Meanwhile, AER gives customers the power to help decide who’s in or out of the stack based on criteria such as emissions. If large numbers of customers leverage AER software to avoid power plants that have higher mercury emissions, those power plants will have a good reason to keep their MATS-compliance technologies running. That outcome would help reduce mercury emissions whenever those power plants are running, and not just when they’re on the margin.

Of course, here at WattTime we’re rooting for MATS to survive. Either way, however, AER remains a compelling tool that gives customers the power to choose clean energy—and, if need be, avoid what could be a lamentable increase in mercury emissions.

The sky is falling: why the time for automated emissions reduction is NOW

In the fabled European folk tale of Chicken Little, the story's eponymous central character believes the world is coming to an end, famously declaring "The sky is falling!" In the centuries since, the idiom’s pop-culture usage has expanded to include the notion that disaster is imminent, whether such fears are founded or not.

To read the news across the past two months, it’s tempting to swap Chicken Little’s “The sky is falling!” for something equally dire along the lines of “The Earth is warming, a lot, and fast! Catastrophic consequences are nearly at our front door!”

In early October, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a widely covered report sounding the loudest alarm to date: the planet’s climate could surpass the 1.5-degree C mark by as soon as 2030 if emissions continue at their current rate, with calamitous outcomes the result.

Then on Black Friday in late November, the United States federal government released its own sweeping climate assessment. Its conclusions were no less dire. It forecasts that global warming will cause hundreds of billions of dollars in losses for the U.S. economy, while inflicting great damage to human health, the environment, and infrastructure.

And on that report’s heels—as the world’s leaders prepared to meet in Poland earlier this month at COP 24—the UN’s Environment Programme released yet another cataclysmic report. In 2017, annual global greenhouse gas emissions reached their highest level ever, while the gap between countries’ emissions-reduction targets and actual emissions is wider than ever.

Feeling depressed yet?

Finding the resolve—and optimism—to act

In the face of this recent onslaught of seemingly doomsday warnings, it’s tempting to be Chicken Little. The sky is falling!

The urgency and concern of such a declaration are certainly well-placed. But apathy and inaction are not, even if the magnitude and severity of the situation feel paralyzing. We must act. We must maintain resolve—and our optimism—in the midst of this planetary crisis.

Our menu of available options has included a fairly familiar set of choices:

The ultimate end state would be an electrified, energy-efficient, zero-carbon global energy system. And an atmosphere whose greenhouse gas concentrations would levelize, or even start to recede.

As the recent reports have so starkly outlined, there’s a yawning chasm between the reality of today, the trajectories we’re on, and where the world needs to get within the next decade or two at most. How do we cross this chasm? And are other, additional options at our disposal?

Automated Emissions Reduction: the right solution at the right time

The world’s myriad energy systems—including its electricity grids—are amidst a great transition period. We are living during a period of overlap between the legacy fossil-fueled infrastructure of last century and the growing base of installed renewable capacity that will power the future.

For as long as these two worlds coexist, there is an enormous and largely untapped opportunity to cost-effectively seize immediate and potentially large emissions reductions. Electricity grids that boast a diverse mix of both fossil-fueled and renewably generated electricity turn out to have highly variable marginal emissions rates. From one moment to the next, the marginal generator being called upon to meet the last kilowatt of electricity demand might be a coal plant, or natural gas plant, or utility-scale solar array, or wind farm (among other options).

If there were a way to know which power plants were marginal where and when—and a way to modulate electricity demand to sync with times of cleaner energy and avoid times of dirtier energy—we could instantly slash electricity-related emissions and add another major tool to our arsenal in the war against climate change.

The accelerating proliferation of smart, Internet-connected devices controlling flexible electricity demand—thermostats, batteries, refrigerators, electric vehicles, etc.—is the first part of the solution. They offer the ability to shift around large amounts of electricity demand.

The second half of the solution is a signal that tells such devices what’s happening on the grid in real time. Without such a signal, smart flexible demand is like driving blind. Sure, you can accelerate and brake, turn left and right, but you have no good way to know when and where to do so.

WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology is that signal. It gives anyone—utilities, IoT device and energy storage companies, end users—the power to choose clean energy, easily and automatically. Based on cutting-edge algorithms and machine learning, AER is the missing link that gives smart devices the signal they need in order to reduce the emissions associated with their energy use.

AER alone of course won’t solve climate change. But the opportunity is ours to seize. AER is a broadly deployable capability we are providing with urgency today as a way to help close the gap between today’s emissions rates and what the planet and humanity needs to achieve. And for as long—or, hopefully, short—we’re deep in this state of transition from the fossil-fueled energy system of old and the renewably-powered future we need, AER is a uniquely suited solution to get more emissions out of the system all the sooner.

Executive Director and Co-Founder of WattTime selected as Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Entrepreneur

Cleantech innovator Gavin McCormick joins portfolio of highly impactful social enterprise leaders

OAKLAND, December 11, 2018 — WattTime is proud to announce the selection of Gavin McCormick, the cleantech nonprofit’s Executive Director and Co-Founder, as a Draper Richards Kaplan (DRK) social entrepreneur.

WattTime will receive $300K of financial support over the next three years. One-third of that funding will come in the form of a loan, as DRK Foundation opts to participate in an innovative debt financing round led by RSF Social Finance. In addition, McCormick will receive executive support to scale WattTime and access to a valuable network of other social entrepreneurs, partners, and domain experts.

The DRK Foundation seeks to make a significant impact on our society’s most challenging issues through innovative strategies, systems level change, and disruptive technologies.  DRK partners with early-stage entrepreneurs to build sustainable and scalable organizations by providing funding, organizational support and an unparalleled network of entrepreneurs. Their portfolio spans the entire globe and ranges from climate organizations to educational groups and beyond.

As a nonprofit, McCormick and WattTime are especially suited to the rigorous support provided by DRK Foundation. McCormick and the WattTime team use machine learning and automation to reach new frontiers in energy choice and give people and companies a simple way to choose to use clean energy.

Potential for expansive impact is an important quality shared by all DRK Foundation portfolio organizations, and WattTime’s solutions are poised for widespread adoption. Their Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology, which turns smart devices into powerful tools for carbon emissions reduction, has the potential to be deployed globally on 23 billion devices by 2020. If adopted at scale in the U.S. alone, it could eliminate 380 million tons of CO2 emissions.

“To say the WattTime team and I are honored to join the ranks of other DRK Foundation organizations is an understatement,” said McCormick. “We often operate like a startup, but we’re a nonprofit at our core, and we rely on the confidence and support of groups like DRK in order to make the greatest impact. Their partnership will be essential in helping WattTime achieve its mission to give people everywhere the power to choose the energy they use.”

As WattTime begins its partnership with DRK Foundation, the nonprofit also welcomes Stephanie Khurana to its board. Khurana is a DRK Foundation Managing Director and successful serial entrepreneur with deep experience in building SaaS companies.

Included in the list of other DRK portfolio organizations are: Kiva, the world’s first crowdfunding platform for social good; SIRUM, a group that redistributes unused prescription medicines to low-income patients; and Kinvolved which catalyzes communities to keep kids in school through a text-based parent engagement platform.

Learn more about McCormick, WattTime and their involvement with DRK Foundation here.

About WattTime
WattTime is a nonprofit with a software tech startup DNA, dedicated to giving everyone everywhere the power to choose clean energy. We invented Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), which allows utilities, IoT device, energy storage companies, and any end user to effortlessly reduce emissions from energy, when and where they happen. Our cutting-edge insights and algorithms, coupled with machine learning, can shift the timing of flexible electricity use to sync with times of cleaner energy and avoid times of dirtier energy. We sell solutions that make it easy for anyone to achieve emissions reductions without compromising cost and user experience. WattTime was founded by PhD researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2017 became a subsidiary of Rocky Mountain Institute.

For more information, please visit WattTime.org.  

WattTime selected as finalist for 2018 Global Energy Awards

The energy tech nonprofit was included as a final choice for the “Emerging Technology of the Year” category by S&P Global Platts

OAKLAND, October 3, 2018 — Today, WattTime announced it has been named to the list of finalists for the S&P Global Platts 2018 Global Energy Awards in the category of “Emerging Technology of the Year.” Finalists in the category are recognized for the “research and development, ingenuity and commercialization potential of new technologies” in areas ranging from renewable energy, to energy storage, to blockchain applications. WattTime, a non-profit subsidiary of Rocky Mountain Institute, is working toward a simple goal: give everyone the freedom to choose the power they use. Their recognition was earned in large part through its work on Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology, software that allows smart devices to shift energy usage times to align with moments of cleaner power, thus reducing CO2 emissions by grid-connected devices. “Our team is proud to be recognized as a finalist in the Emerging Technology of the Year category," said Gavin McCormick, co-founder and executive director of WattTime. "And hopefully we won't be on this list for long. With our AER solution, a future where consumers choose the energy they’re using can be realized globally in as little as two years if adopted at scale, particularly by device makers, including battery storage companies, and utilities + demand response aggregators. “We hope this Global Energy Awards recognition helps to shine a spotlight on the opportunity for this technology to easily and  affordably reduce emissions while also encouraging the integration of more and more renewable energy into the grid." An independent panel of judges—including former regulators, past heads of major energy companies, leading academics, and international energy experts—will decide the winner. Final winners in all categories for the Global Energy Awards will be announced on 6 December 2018 at a black-tie celebration at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. About WattTime WattTime is an environmental non-profit built on cutting edge research by University of California, Berkeley PhDs. WattTime’s "environmental demand response" platform makes it possible to actually choose which power plants your devices rely on. With a simple software update, smart device owners can instantly and permanently reduce their carbon footprint and other pollution, and help clean and renewable power plants compete on the grid. Forward-looking companies partner with WattTime to empower their users to make a real difference for the environment that is as easy as pushing a button. For more information, please visit www.WattTime.org.

Contact Nicole Arnone Client and Media Relations Manager nicolearnone@inflectionpointagency.com +1.770.856.7185

How Michigan’s 50% clean energy target could open new emissions reduction opportunities

Last month environmental advocates led by activist Tom Steyer and a coalition known as Clean Energy, Healthy Michigan claimed a major victory in advancing the state toward a clean energy—and a clean air—future.

Faced with a looming November 2018 ballot initiative that would have required 30% of Michigan’s electricity sales to come from renewable energy sources by 2030, the state’s two largest utilities, DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, jointly announced instead to target 50% clean energy by 2030. At least 25% of their electricity sales will come from renewable energy. The balance of the target they’ll meet largely through energy efficiency.

This latest major development comes fast on the heels of two other notable bright spots earlier this year. In February, Consumers Energy announced that it would phase out its coal-fired generation over the next two decades, while also targeting generating at least 40% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2040. Then in April, DTE Energy submitted its 2018 Renewable Energy Plan to the Michigan Public Service Commission. The plan calls for doubling the utility’s renewable energy capacity by 2022 from 1 to 2 GW and driving $1.7 billion in clean energy investment, largely in wind energy with a small amount of solar.

All told, it comes as a big breath of fresh air to a state that wrestled with the problem for years.

Michigan’s fight for cleaner air

At the beginning of this decade, Michigan and its residents faced an air quality crisis underscored by two damning reports released just months apart. In May 2011, the journal Health Affairs published research showing how chronic air pollution around schools in Michigan was linked to poorer student health and academic performance, disproportionately affecting low-income and racial or ethnic minority communities. One of the chief sources of air quality problems? Power plant emissions.

Two months later, in July 2011 the Natural Resources Defense Council released its Toxic Twenty report, shining the spotlight of attention on those states with the highest levels of toxic air pollution from power plants. Michigan’s overall total industrial toxic air pollution was among the worst in the country. It ranked seventh worst specifically for toxic air pollution from the electricity sector, which accounted for 73% of the state’s air pollution.

By 2016, Michigan’s air pollution situation had started to improve according to the State’s annual air quality report, but still had a long way to go. In March of that year, Medical Daily–part of the Newsweek Media Group and boasting more than 8 million unique visitors per month and 2.2 million Facebook followers—declared Michigan’s air quality problem much bigger than the infamous water problem in Flint. More needed to be done to address the issue.

Clearer skies ahead for Michigan

At a time when other states from Hawaii to Oregon to New York have set bold renewable energy and clean energy targets, Michigan’s is particularly exciting because of how much positive impact it could have.

Last year fossil fuels generated just shy of 60% of Michigan’s electricity; coal alone accounted for 37%, according to numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Renewables including hydro, meanwhile, generated just 8%.

According to a basic WattTime analysis, every megawatt of new wind energy built in Michigan today will displace about two-thirds coal-fired generation and one-third natural gas-fired generation. Thus based on today’s grid mix in Michigan, new renewable energy projects could avoid around a whopping 1,700 lbs CO2 emissions per MWh of generation. To put such numbers into perspective, that 1,700-lb swing in Michigan’s marginal grid emissions from dirty to clean makes the emissionality benefits of new renewables—how much fossil-fueled emissions are avoided for each MW of new renewables built—among the best in the country.

In fact, on an avoided-emissions-per-new-renewable-megawatt basis, renewable energy investments in Michigan are about twice as effective as similar investments in places such as parts of California, Florida, and Massachusetts and roughly 1.5x as effective as neighboring Great Lakes states such as New York.

And the benefits don’t stop there. As Michigan’s grid gets closer to its 50% clean energy target, the grid’s “personality” will change, too. It’ll go from being a “monotone” personality defined by a more or less steady stream of traditional, dirty, coal-fired baseload generation to a “dynamic” personality characterized by much larger minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour swings in marginal grid emissions depending on whether natural gas or variable renewables are supplying the electrons. This unlocks a whole other realm of possibility.

With a grid that has a constantly fluctuating rate of marginal emissions—from dirty to clean to dirty and so on—smart devices such as thermostats, electric water heaters, electric vehicles, battery energy storage, etc. can use real-time and predictive signals from a source such as WattTime in order to automatically and effortlessly use cleaner energy and avoid dirtier energy. This effectively multiplies the emissions benefits of Michigan’s new renewable energy and its clean energy target.

Depending on the specific device and how flexible you assume its electricity demand can be, this capability generates a “bonus” emissions reduction of 5–15% or more above and beyond the aforementioned savings achieved by increasing renewable energy on the grid. For example, an electric vehicle recharging overnight has a lot of flexibility to decide specifically when it’s pulling electricity to charge the vehicle and when it wants to “wait” for the grid to get cleaner.

For certain, Michigan’s electricity sector air quality concerns won’t turn around overnight. But this year’s 50% clean energy target agreement and what it means for toxic air pollution and human and environmental impacts means that there’s a good sightline to clearer skies ahead. And here at WattTime, we’re equally excited about the role that flexible demand can play for enabling smart devices to automatically and effortlessly choose cleaner energy, in the process helping Michigan make ever greater progress in its journey toward cleaner air.

Clean energy portfolios could be an avoided emissions juggernaut

By Peter Bronski

In early January, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a ruling that might well prove to be a bellwether for natural gas-fired power plants: the CPUC directed one of the state’s investor-owned utilities to procure energy storage and/or preferred resources such as demand response and distributed solar to replace three existing gas plants (two gas peakers and a 580-megawatt combined cycle plant).

In the months since, we’ve come to know such combinations of energy storage, flexible demand, and distributed energy resources such as rooftop and community solar by another name: clean energy portfolios. And the idea that these clean energy portfolios could be both technologically and economically competitive with natural gas power plants represents a landmark shift for the market.

That shift now appears to be on the precipice of a major inflection point, per a new report released late last month by Rocky Mountain Institute, The Economics of Clean Energy Portfolios. A team from RMI analyzed four planned natural gas power plants in different regions of the U.S. and evaluated instead replacing them with portfolios of renewables, energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and storage.

More than 100 gigawatts of new, announced natural gas power plants are planned for the U.S. through 2025. Extrapolating retirements and anticipated further new builds through 2030, that “rush to gas” comes with a hefty price tag, locking in $1 trillion in combined infrastructure investment and fuel costs (just over half for capex, the remainder for opex). It also comes with a massive emissions footprint: 5 billion tons of CO2 through 2030 and 16 billion tons through the 20-year lifetimes of those gas plants.

Could clean energy portfolios obviate such as a costly scenario? According to RMI’s analysis, yes. And incorporating WattTime insights and capabilities into those portfolios could make their emissions benefits even greater.

The four real-world scenarios RMI evaluated included:

The corresponding clean energy portfolios varied according to the local grid mix and the primary services they needed to deliver (e.g., baseload capacity, peaking capacity, flexibility/ramping). The portfolios ranged from half wind paired with some storage and energy efficiency to three-quarters flexible demand paired with smaller slices of solar, storage, and efficiency.

“The biggest factor influencing portfolios in each region was the compatibility of local renewable resources with regional load profiles,” explains Mark Dyson, a principal at RMI and one of the lead authors of the new report. “For example, the West Coast region has significant existing solar, so the clean energy portfolio we modeled there relies heavily on new wind to balance solar production. In contrast, we found that new solar in Florida was very valuable for meeting mid-day loads in a state without as much existing solar capacity.”

Even with RMI’s conservative assumptions, the economics were impressive—from essentially net present cost parity in some scenarios (i.e., plus/minus 10%) to substantial savings of 40–60% in other scenarios—prompting media outlets such as Forbes to declare “the ‘rush to gas’ will strand billions as renewables get cheaper.”

“Given the cost declines in renewables and battery storage in recent years, it's not surprising that the economics look good for clean energy portfolios today. What's surprising is how fast the economics turn even better, and the stark implications for investment in new natural gas infrastructure,” Dyson adds.

The emissions side of the story may prove even more profound than the economic one. Clearly, in each of the four scenarios RMI analyzed, the clean energy portfolios avoid the fossil-fueled emissions that would come onto the grid if each of those natural gas plants gets built. Over the 20-year life of those plants, the savings range from 1–2 million tons of cumulative CO2 to upwards of 66 million tons. Across the four scenarios alone, the savings total more than 90 million tons. Total nationwide savings could reach 16 billion tons.

There are likely even further emissions savings available for the taking. For starters, replacing a natural gas power plant with a clean energy portfolio changes where those megawatts of generation sit in the merit order dispatch stack, the order by which grid operators call upon supply-side resources to meet electricity demand. The generator that fulfills the last megawatt of demand is known as the marginal generator.

Renewables generally sit first in the stack, thanks to their near-zero marginal operating costs (e.g., no fuel costs vs. fossil-fueled plants). This means that clean energy portfolios further build up the renewably-generated bottom of the merit order dispatch stack and thus potentially push even more fossil-fueled marginal generation out the top of the stack, above and beyond obviating the new-build gas plant. These “bonus” avoided marginal emissions will vary by location and its local grid mix, but they are very much real.

Further, RMI’s assemblage of clean energy portfolios includes a healthy mix of flexible demand, which equals up to three-quarters of the pie in the case of the Florida portfolio. This represents yet another opportunity to avoid emissions. That’s because how clean or dirty the grid’s electricity is varies across the hours of the day and night, depending on which generation sources are providing the electricity.

When WattTime-enabled smart devices such as thermostats, grid-interactive water heaters, electric vehicles, and others are enabled with the right software signal, they can automatically and effortlessly use their flexible demand to arbitrage clean and dirty grid times, choosing to consume electricity when generation is cleaner and to avoid energy consumption when it’s dirtier. In places where there’s both legacy dirty generation and a sizeable chunk of clean, variable renewable generation, the per-kWh opportunity to shave emissions can be huge.

So what’s next for making the promise of clean energy portfolios a reality? “The path forward requires solving some of the ‘soft cost’ challenges of integrating multiple technologies to meet grid needs,” says RMI’s Dyson. “In particular, customer acquisition costs for energy efficiency and demand response programs can be significant. WattTime-enabled demand flexibility can improve the customer value proposition and help scale deployment of demand-side resources.”

The net takeaway is that clean energy portfolios present a compelling cost-competitive, emissions-less alternative to new natural gas power plants and they can unlock even greater emissions-reduction benefits. This is exciting. As renewable energy continues its rapid growth, the grid’s decarbonization could accelerate even faster ahead of renewables’ megawatts expansion.

How to save a United States' worth of carbon emissions

As Renewables Surge, They Can Do More, With a 4 Gigaton Opportunity Right Under Their Noses

By Matt Evans and Chiel Borenstein

Pick up any newspaper today, and there are stories that might make you worry. But one bright spot has been the continuing Cinderella story of renewable energy worldwide. When WattTime was founded only a few years ago, renewable energy deployment every year was barely more than a footnote in the global economy. No more. According to January 2018 numbers from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, world clean energy investment totaled $333.5 billion in 2017. That’s a 3% increase vs. 2016 and the second-highest annual investment total ever. Cumulative investment since 2010 has reached an impressive $2.5 trillion.

Investment focused on solar (48% of the global total), then wind, then energy-smart technologies (including smart meters, battery storage, smart grid, and electric vehicles), then all other clean energy technologies (which collectively ranked a very distant fourth).

The United States, for its part, ranked second globally behind only China. That clean energy investment helped to propel the U.S. to its third consecutive year of emissions declines, dropping by 0.5% in 2017.

Domestically and internationally, these are encouraging developments about which to be rightfully optimistic. Yet if we want to beat climate change before we reach the tipping point, we need to move even faster. It’s time for renewables to seize the moment and up their game. At WattTime, we have discovered a way they can do just that.

Tackling the Carbon Emissions Elephant in the Room

Back in November 2017, Carbon Brief—a UK-based climate science journalism site—reported on some alarming findings from the Global Carbon Project: after a three-year plateau, global annual carbon emissions were forecasted to rise by an estimated 2% by the end of the year.

Last month, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) confirmed those initial estimates in IEA’s inaugural Global Energy & CO2 Status Report. The verdict? In 2017, global energy-related CO2 emissions rose 1.4% to a record-high 32.5 gigatons.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2018, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) March 2018 release of its Short-Term Energy Outlook, U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions are expected to rise by 1.0% in 2018, followed by another 0.8% in 2019.

In the wake of the Paris Agreement, it all could be seen as a discouraging setback in the race to decarbonize the energy sector. But rather than despair, there is reason for hope. Renewables in particular have an opportunity to make each new clean MW go further. Here’s how.

The 4 Gigaton Opportunity Sitting Under Renewables’ Noses

People typically think of solar, wind, and other clean-energy projects as just creating zero-emissions energy, making them in some sense all the same. But upon closer inspection, not all renewable energy is actually created equal. After all, the way that renewables help the environment is that they displace dirty energy. So, the same wind turbine can actually have radically different impacts on the environment and the electricity grid’s emissions depending on whether it’s displacing, say, a coal plant, or another windmill.

Thus, as is often noted in matters of real estate, when it comes to renewable energy deployment, location matters. Where developers site new renewable generation can greatly influence which kinds of energy they displace, and therefore how much carbon emissions those clean electrons ‘erase.’ As it turns out, the size of that prize is large. Very large.

Recently, the WattTime team crunched the numbers from the U.S. EIA’s International Energy Outlook 2017, which forecasts world energy generation and consumption through 2040. The results were very surprising to our team.

If the global distribution of new renewable energy generation forecasted to be built through 2030 were redistributed geographically to optimize for avoided emissions, it could save an estimated 4 gigatons (Gt) of carbon emissions over the life of those renewable energy projects. That number is nearly equal to the annual carbon emissions of the United States.

And the impact could easily be far greater. Renewable energy capacity additions have routinely far surpassed the U.S. EIA’s projections in past years, so 4 Gt—big as that number is—could merely be the starting point.

This is an incredible “free” opportunity. Think again about the implications: holding renewable energy investment and new MW of clean generation constant—and optimizing solely on location for the sake of avoided emissions—renewables that are already planned could vastly multiply their impact.

Such an opportunity is squarely within reach. It is now incumbent on utilities, renewable energy developers, renewable energy buyers, and others to add a new lens to their clean energy investment and deployment. Alongside dollars and MW we should now also include location-optimized avoided emissions. A United States’ worth of carbon emissions are on the line and available for the taking.