Redmond, Wash. and Oakland, Calif.—March 10, 2022—Today electric vehicle (EV) smart charging platform FlexCharging announced an exciting new feature available in its app. FlexCharging’s software will now allow EV drivers to prioritize lower grid emissions during their charging sessions. The feature will leverage Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), a solution from environmental tech nonprofit WattTime that allows smart devices—including EVs charging—to sync their electricity use with moments of cleaner energy while avoiding times when power grid emissions are higher.
“We know that EV drivers are highly motivated to make a positive environmental impact,” explained Laura McCarty, COO of FlexCharging. “This new feature in our app puts more power in the hands of EV drivers to shrink their carbon footprint even further, while also saving on electricity costs.”
FlexCharging’s app already allows EV drivers to optimize their charging sessions to minimize electricity costs and/or to charge using their home’s rooftop solar PV energy. The additional ability to prioritize charging to avoid times of dirtier grid electricity incorporates a powerful new feature into the platform. Just-released analysis from RMI, More EVs, Fewer Emissions, found that charging EVs on all grids across the United States is cleaner than driving a gasoline-fueled car, but that smart charging can make EVs even cleaner by further reducing the grid emissions associated with their electricity use. (WattTime and FlexCharging both provided data for RMI’s analysis.)
“Smart EV charging is an incredible opportunity to support the clean energy transition,” said Christy Lewis, Director of Analysis at WattTime. “We applaud FlexCharging for taking a leading role with a solution that makes it easy for drivers: they set their preferences in the app, start their next charge session, and walk away. FlexCharging’s platform handles the rest. Drivers return to a charged battery and a lower carbon footprint.”
The FlexCharging app is compatible with EVs from nearly a dozen major automakers, including Tesla, Nissan, Ford, Chevy, and Volkswagen, with new makes and models being added to the platform soon. The app is also applicable to EV fleet owners and operators such as cities, as well as utilities, corporations, and other organizations interested in harnessing managed charging to reduce their total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions footprint.
About FlexCharging
FlexCharging is a no-hardware Electric Vehicle (EV) data collection and managed charging app and platform. It allows EV drivers and utilities to partner to manage EV charging to reduce peak EV loads, reduce peaking capacity needs and demonstrate to utilities and customers the results of utility programs' reduction in GHG emissions and power costs. FlexCharging provides EV charging, driving and 'dwell' data that provides important insights to utilities (e.g., charge location, time, amount, type of charge, etc.) and runs an optimization algorithm to manage charging to meet driver needs and utility program constraints.
About WattTime
WattTime is an environmental tech nonprofit that empowers all people, companies, policymakers, and countries to slash emissions and choose cleaner energy. Founded by UC Berkeley researchers, we develop data-driven tools and policies that increase environmental and social good. During the energy transition from a fossil-fueled past to a zero-carbon future, WattTime ‘bends the curve’ of emissions reductions to realize deeper, faster benefits for people and the planet.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES, November 2, 2021 -- Today clean energy analytics firm REsurety and environmental tech nonprofit WattTime announced a partnership to increase access to more comprehensive and granular carbon emissions data across U.S. and international markets. Through this partnership, they will leverage their respective strengths in measuring marginal carbon emissions to provide previously unavailable depth and breadth of visibility into the carbon impact of clean energy projects and load centers. This helps companies consider the resulting impact of their energy-related procurement options and understand which choices offer the greatest benefit to the environment.
REsurety first unveiled its Locational Marginal Emissions (LME) data product in July 2021 with the support of major developers, investors, and corporates. LME empowers customers to measure and maximize how much carbon they cut through clean energy purchases. REsurety currently offers nodal LME data for the ERCOT (Texas) market. Through this new integration of WattTime’s regional emissions dataset, REsurety will also be able to provide regional marginal emissions rates across the entire continental United States as well as international power grids including Europe and Australia.
“LME data enables companies to measure the impact of their existing clean energy purchases with unrivaled accuracy and confidence, and empowers them to maximize the carbon impact of their future investments,” said Lee Taylor, founder and CEO of REsurety. “We are thrilled to have found a like-minded partner in WattTime as we work together to maximize our collective decarbonization impact.”
WattTime invented Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) software, which enables the shifting of flexible electricity loads to periods of cleaner energy and away from moments of dirtier energy, based on the time-specific marginal emissions rates in different grid balancing areas. In recent years, WattTime has also popularized “emissionality,” the practice of using the location-specific avoided emissions benefits of different renewable energy projects in the selection process. With WattTime’s help, organizations including Boston University, solar developer Clearloop, steel producer Nucor, and tech giant Salesforce have all incorporated emissionality into their renewable energy strategies.
“With the growing urgency of the climate crisis and organizations’ desire to maximize the positive impact of their sustainability strategies and investments, REsurety and their LME platform offer a powerful tool to evaluate potential projects,” said Henry Richardson, senior analyst at WattTime. “We’re proud to support REsurety and enhance the emissions intelligence they are able to provide.”
LMEs bring a new level of precision and accuracy to measuring the carbon abated or created at any given moment and at any given location on the grid. By calculating the carbon emissions at each node on the grid with hourly granularity, REsurety’s LME product offers, for the first time, visibility into the project-specific carbon impact of each clean energy purchase or investment. By integrating WattTime’s emissions data into its platform, REsurety will be able to provide its clients with regional marginal emissions data in areas where the nodal LME data is not yet available, thereby greatly expanding the geographic coverage of the platform.
About REsurety
REsurety is the leading analytics company empowering the clean energy economy. Operating at the intersection of weather, power markets, and financial modeling, we enable the industry’s decision makers to thrive by providing best-in-class value and risk intelligence, and the tools to act on it. With the world’s most sophisticated clean energy investors, advisors, buyers, and developers as clients and 7,000 MW of transactions closed, REsurety empowers clients to thrive in the dynamic, complex, clean energy-fueled future. For more information, visit www.resurety.com or follow REsurety on LinkedIn.
About WattTime
WattTime is an environmental tech nonprofit that empowers all people, companies, policymakers, and countries to slash emissions and choose cleaner energy. Founded by UC Berkeley researchers, we develop data-driven tools and policies that increase environmental and social good, including Automated Emissions Reduction and emissionality. WattTime is also the convening member and cofounder of the global Climate TRACE coalition. During the energy transition from a fossil-fueled past to a zero-carbon future, WattTime ‘bends the curve’ of emissions reductions to realize deeper, faster benefits for people and the planet. For more information, visit https://watttime.org.
Peter Kelley
RenewComm LLC
+1 202-270-8831
peter@renewcomm.com
Saginaw, Mich. and Oakland, Calif.—October 28, 2021—Today Hemlock Semiconductor Operations, LLC (HSC), a manufacturer of hyper-pure polysilicon for the electronic and solar power industries, announced it has collaborated with Michigan energy provider Consumers Energy and environmental tech nonprofit WattTime to reduce grid emissions through industrial load shifting. At full production, HSC is the largest single-site user of electricity in the state of Michigan and the largest customer of Consumers Energy.
HSC worked with WattTime to assess the ability to use WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology to adjust the timing of its flexible electricity demand to sync with moments of cleaner energy. In tandem, Consumers Energy developed a rate that included both real-time pricing and demand-based attributes to further encourage demand flexibility. Based on WattTime analysis, this industrial load shifting could help HSC reduce CO2 emissions by up to ~2,500 metric tons annually, equivalent to eliminating more than 6 million miles driven by a passenger car or not burning more than 2.7 million pounds of coal.
“We are proud of our ongoing sustainability efforts and are excited about how shifting some of our energy demand can further reduce emissions and help incorporate more renewables on Michigan’s grid,” explained Phil Rausch, Solar Commercial Manager at
HSC. “Plus, as a member of the Ultra Low-Carbon Solar Alliance, we remain focused on doing our part to decarbonize all parts of the solar energy supply chain, including the polysilicon we supply to the solar industry.”
Industrial load shifting with a company like HSC can be a powerful tool for Michigan’s grid (which is part of MISO) as it rapidly transitions to higher amounts of renewable energy. In June 2021 Consumers Energy announced an updated plan to retire all coal-fired generation by 2025, 15 years ahead of its original schedule. This comes as part of Consumers Energy’s updated Clean Energy Plan, which calls for 1,100 MW of new solar capacity by 2024 and nearly 8,000 MW of new solar by 2040.
“Our work with HSC shows how energy-intensive customers can contribute meaningfully to our Clean Energy Plan while also keeping costs competitive,” said Brian Rich, Consumers Energy’s senior vice president of customer experience. “For example, as Consumers Energy adds new solar capacity to Michigan’s grid, HSC could be an important flexible demand anchor for incorporating that solar, especially with seasonal load shifting to help absorb solar generation in the spring and fall when residential and commercial electricity demand is lower.”
WattTime’s analysis went further, and found even greater emissions-reduction opportunities by applying HSC’s degree of industrial load shifting to other grids, such as California (CAISO) and the Great Plains (SPP). Industrial demand flexibility in these regions offer substantial emissions-reduction potential of up to 34% vs. baseline emissions associated with the shifted load, approximately 10x greater emissions savings on a percentage basis and 8x greater on an absolute emissions basis than what is achievable in the Great Lakes region (MISO) today. As more renewables are built in Michigan in the years ahead, we’d expect to see similar opportunities there for HSC and other industrial customers.
“Hemlock Semiconductor and Consumers Energy are showing how industrial loads can add needed flexibility to power grids, helping to reduce emissions and integrate more renewables in the process,” concluded Laura Corso, managing director of partnerships at WattTime. “What’s possible in Michigan currently is just the tip of the iceberg. Regions such as California and the Great Plains today show even greater emissions-reduction potential, and they reflect what will be possible in Michigan in the near future—sizable emissions reductions that accelerate the clean energy transition during this decisive decade of climate action.”
To learn more about the collaboration between Hemlock Semiconductor, Consumers Energy, and WattTime—and the emissions-reduction potential of industrial load shifting—please download their new joint white paper, Powering the Future: Harnessing Industrial Demand Flexibility to Reduce Emissions and Integrate Renewables (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | FULL REPORT).
ABOUT THE PARTNERS
Hemlock Semiconductor is a producer of hyper pure polycrystalline silicon, providing the key feedstock for the semiconductor and photovoltaic industries. As the single largest consumer of electricity in the state of Michigan, HSC is dedicated to reducing its carbon emissions. HSC participates in existing market programs concerning MISO Demand Response and engages in load shifting in accordance with market programs and time of use pricing. Recently HSC's efforts were recognized as Project of the Year by the Michigan EIBC (Energy Innovation Business Council) for work in shifting electrical consumption from on-peak to off-peak periods, and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has also designated HSC as a Clean Corporate Citizen (C3). Learn more about HSC at www.hscpoly.com.
Consumers Energy, Michigan’s largest energy provider, is the principal subsidiary of CMS Energy (NYSE: CMS), providing natural gas and/or electricity to 6.8 million of the state’s 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties Learn more at www.consumersenergy.com.
WattTime is an environmental tech nonprofit that empowers all people, companies, policymakers, and countries to slash emissions and choose cleaner energy. Founded by UC Berkeley researchers, we develop data-driven tools and policies that increase environmental and social good, including Automated Emissions Reduction and emissionality. WattTime is also the convening member and cofounder of the global Climate TRACE coalition. During the energy transition from a fossil-fueled past to a zero-carbon future, WattTime ‘bends the curve’ of emissions reductions to realize deeper, faster benefits for people and planet.