Smart charging technology will allow schools and workplaces to charge electric buses, vans, and more with clean energy  

Santa Barbara, CA and Oakland, CA, October 22, 2019 — Today electric fleet charging technology company Liberty Access Technologies (Liberty) and environmental tech nonprofit WattTime announced a new clean charging partnership to support schools and workplaces in their transition to all-electric fleets. WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) software will integrate with Liberty’s charging technology to allow buses, vans, and more to automatically charge with clean power. Liberty offers electric vehicle charging systems for the new generation of electric school buses and delivery vans. Their current clients hail from the utility space, government, the private sector, and include names such as San Diego Gas and Electric, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Los Angeles County. Expanding to support school districts’ electrification of transportation is the next step in the company’s growth. Liberty’s core offering is the HYDRA-RX AC Fast Charger Controller, which produces quick charging times at a fraction of the cost of DC Fast Chargers, enabling schools to convert more quickly to electric buses. “As firm believers in a clean mobility future, we feel it’s imperative to support schools and workplaces as they make the switch to all-electric fleets,” said Chris Outwater, CEO of Liberty. “By incorporating WattTime’s AER software with our cost-saving charging technology, we can ensure they benefit from both financial savings and carbon savings. We’re excited to help these groups reach their sustainability goals without sacrificing quality of service.” WattTime’s recently-released EV charging report—How Emissions-Optimized EV Charging Enables Cleaner Electric Vehicles—highlights just how powerful their AER-enabled smart charging can be. In the report, WattTime finds emissions-optimized EV charging can further reduce associated EV-charging emissions nearly 20 percent annually and up to 90 percent on individual days. This is above and beyond standard emissions savings that come from choosing an electric vehicle over a gas-powered alternative. “School buses and corporate fleets represent a perfect opportunity for AER to drive emissions reductions; these vehicles are only used a fraction of the day and can otherwise remain plugged in to optimize charge times for the cleanest electricity,” said Gavin McCormick, founder and executive director of WattTime. “The added bonus is that—instead of exposing schoolchildren or employees to tailpipe emissions—we’re helping make electric vehicles the norm.” Electric mobility is just one of many sectors that technology provider WattTime is involved with. Their solutions make it easy for anyone to choose clean energy and achieve emissions reductions without compromising cost and user experience. WattTime’s AER software enables smart devices of all kinds—from EV chargers to smart thermostats to water heaters—to automatically opt to use clean energy. AER monitors power generation and marginal emissions rates in real-time, then uses that data to optimize energy use based on the environmental impact of consuming electricity at a given moment. Liberty’s announcement to team up with WattTime comes soon after another partnership launched with electric company PG&E. The two will work together to support the electrification and clean energy goals of a school district in Northern California by collaborating on eco-friendly charging options for electric buses. Their pilot will be a test case for PG&E’s new FleetReady program.  

About Liberty Access Technologies
LAT specializes in access control systems for electric vehicle charging in the parking industry, fleet EV and multi-tenant dwellings. LAT’s patented Synchronous Code Generation technology enables secure charging without expensive networks, and the Hydra Multi EVSE Control system enables cost effective large scale EV charging solutions for workplace and multi-tenant. Our mission is to use our patented technology to enable our customers to control access, costs and carbon emissions via our "grid-aware" technology. Find out more at www.libertyaccesstechnologies.com or www.linkedin.com/company/liberty-access-technologies  

About WattTime
WattTime is a nonprofit with a software tech startup DNA, dedicated to giving everyone everywhere the power to choose clean energy. Our Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology 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 is a subsidiary of Rocky Mountain Institute. For more information, please visit WattTime.org.  

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

In the wake of last Friday’s global climate strike, this week’s NYC Climate Week, and the forthcoming UNFCCC COP25 climate conference in Chile later this year, all eyes are focused on rapidly decarbonizing the worldwide economy. Of the many levers to pull, two in particular often sit front and center in the conversation: slashing power sector emissions with renewables and transportation electrification to get mobility off oil. 

As the thinking goes, they are most effective when used together as a one-two punch: 1) electrify vehicles (EVs) to eliminate tailpipe emissions and adopt hyper-efficient powertrains and 2) charge those vehicles on cleaner grids to drastically reduce their associated emissions. It’s a powerful combo, exemplified by a recent study focused on the state of Colorado.

Electric vehicles are Colorado’s biggest emissions-reduction opportunity

Vibrant Clean Energy conducted the Colorado study, and Vox last month had a fabulous summary dissecting the findings. Vibrant modeled three scenarios through 2040:

–Business as usual: Colorado’s electricity grid and transportation sector look in 2040 much as they do today, and emissions remain essentially unchanged

–Cleaner grid: coal plants are shuttered and replaced with oodles of wind, solar, and some natural gas, slashing power-sector emissions 55% and statewide emissions 16% overall

–Cleaner grid + EVs: power-sector emissions fall a more modest 46% (thanks to natural gas generation meeting some of the increased demand from EVs), but statewide emissions overall drop an impressive 42%, thanks to an 80% decrease in transportation-sector emissions

These are exciting findings, to be sure. Yet they only scratch the surface of possibilities.

Emissions-optimized EV charging can further slash Colorado’s climate profile

For one, emissions-optimized EV charging can further slash transportation emissions above and beyond the electrification switch from gasoline- and diesel-burning  internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to EVs. The idea is wonderfully simple in theory, though it takes some sophisticated software wizardry behind the scenes to implement in practice.

Several of the most-common EV charging scenarios—namely level 2 workplace charging during the day and overnight charging at home—don’t require the full charging time window in order to top off an EV’s battery. That difference between time needed to charge and time the EV remains plugged in to the grid allows an opportunity to optimize. More specifically, you can sync charging with moments of cleaner energy and pause EV charging during moments of dirtier energy.

A recently released WattTime analysis examined just how much cleaner EVs could be with smart emissions-optimized charging vs. traditional “dumb” charging. Two of the four representative grid balancing areas WattTime analyzed included WACM (a good proxy for historically coal-heavy western Colorado) and SPP (a good proxy for Xcel Energy’s wind-rich service territory up and down Colorado’s Front Range and High Plains).

The study found that EVs could be up to almost 18% cleaner annually and up to 60% cleaner on individual days. Remember: these are incremental additional emissions savings on top of the beneficial switch from ICE autos to EVs. That’s huge. 

As Colorado’s grid gets more variable, emissions-optimized charging becomes even more important

For another, the Vibrant study’s view out to 2040 and Colorado’s potential grid mix reveals another key insight. As Colorado’s grid mix becomes dominantly wind and solar, supported by natural gas-fired generation, that grid will start to exhibit high emissions variability. To quote Vox article author David Roberts, Colorado’s “dispatch becomes much more volatile, with wind and solar providing almost 100 percent of energy at some points and natural gas almost 100 percent at others.”

This is highly consistent with WattTime’s findings in its study: “We should expect more grids across the country and around the world to exhibit emissions variability and emissions-reduction opportunities as they add more renewables to legacy fossil-fueled systems.” 

That variability is a twofold opportunity for emissions-optimized EV charging: a) It enables even deeper emissions savings as the grid exhibits greater amplitude in its moment-to-moment swings from “very clean” to “dirtier.” b) It also presents opportunities for EVs to aid further grid integration of renewable generation, reducing curtailment and absorbing what would otherwise be wasted surplus wind and solar, helping to reduce the total need for natural gas to balance renewables’ variability.

Demand flexibility—whether from EVs or other smart technologies—is the crucial arbiter of tomorrow’s electricity grid supply and demand

At the end of the day, “emissions-optimized EV charging” is a transportation-specific name for a term that has gained increasing traction in recent years: demand flexibility. In a future world—whether within Colorado or beyond—in which we have a renewables-rich and variable grid supply and a robust fleet of electric vehicle demand, flexibility sits at the dynamic interface between them.

It is an elegant software-based solution that does more than complement renewables and EVs and other advanced energy technologies; it downright unlocks their fuller potential in a transformational turnover in hardware infrastructure—solar panels and wind turbines in lieu of coal and natural gas power plants, electrified powertrains in lieu of internal combustion engine automobiles and other light-duty vehicles.

Yes, a cleaner grid and electrified transportation can drastically reduce Colorado’s climate impact. But both can be even better versions of themselves if flexible demand, vis-a-vis emissions-optimized EV charging, is at the heart of their dance together.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

It’s the 9th annual National Drive Electric Week (NDEW)! More than 300 events—mostly throughout the United States, but also in a growing number of locations around the world—will offer consumers a chance to learn about, test drive, and even buy an electric vehicle. Undoubtedly, electric vehicles (EVs) are surging in popularity right now. It’s a trend that shows little sign of slowing down.

There were already more than 1 million EVs on the road in the U.S. by the end of 2018. By 2030, that number is forecast to reach nearly 19 million, according to a report from the Edison Electric Institute. Similarly, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s 2019 Electric Vehicle Outlook notes that annual EV sales totalled just a few thousand in 2010, and reached more than 2 million globally last year. BNEF forecasts global annual EV sales to hit 10 million by 2025 and 28 million by 2030.  

Delivering against the green promise of EVs

Nearly two-thirds of prospective car buyers in America have interest in electric vehicles (EVs), according to a recent survey from Consumer Reports and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Not surprisingly, some 73% say that EVs can help reduce oil use and 72% believe EVs can help reduce pollution. Those are both true statements. But how much cleaner can EVs become vs. their internal combustion engine counterparts? UCS and others, including us here at WattTime, have looked at the emissions associated with charging EVs on various grids—some with more polluting fossil-fueled generation and others with more clean renewably-generated electricity. The good news is that, relative to the U.S. light-duty fleet average fuel economy of 22 MPG, EVs are cleaner everywhere.  But it turns out that EVs can be even cleaner, and sometimes, much cleaner.

Emissions-optimized charging unlocks EVs’ full potential

At a time when annual changes in overall electricity demand are pretty much flat (thanks in part to the effectiveness of energy-efficiency programs), EVs represent a unique source of new demand for utilities and our power grid. Meanwhile, it’s pretty much common knowledge that from coast to coast we’ve been rapidly adding more and more renewable energy to the power grid. These two forces present a golden opportunity for EV charging.

First, as we add more renewable energy to electricity grids that are transitioning away from their legacy fossil-fueled generation, we’re seeing stronger and stronger variation in emissions rates from the grid. Sometimes the grid is cleaner, and sometimes it’s dirtier, depending whether polluting power plants or clean renewables are making up the mix.

Second, with new demand from EVs, every time you plug in an EV charge, the electricity grid has to ramp generation up or down to account for that change in load. But what power plants are responding? Does the utility have to turn on an inefficient, heavier-polluting, fossil-fueled peaker plant? Is surplus wind or solar generation being thrown away because there isn’t enough demand at that moment to absorb the emissions-free electricity?

With the right kind of insights into real-time grid conditions—and the ability to send that information via software signal to EVs—they could time their charging to sync with moments of clean electricity and avoid moments of dirty energy, making EVs cleaner than they already are.

A new WattTime report shows EVs’ emissions-saving capability

Just on the eve of this week’s NDEW, we released a new report that analyzed the emissions-saving capability of smarter EV charging. We looked at four representative grids across the country, and two common charging scenarios: daytime workplace charging and at-home overnight charging. Our findings were nothing short of exciting. Using an emissions-optimized charging cycle, such as WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction software, EVs could become up to 20% cleaner annually and 90% on individual days… incredibly through nothing more than smart software that modulates when an EV starts and stops charging within its allotted charge window (while still leaving you with a full battery, of course).

This is a gamechanger for EVs. Without ever touching their already-superefficient powertrains, it’s like giving them a big MPGe boost. They can drive just as far, but with fewer associated grid emissions. Which in the end delivers on one of the big reasons why drivers flocking to EVs in the first place: they’re green.  Now, they can be greener still. With EV awareness on the rise—thanks in part to  high-profile events such as NDEW—it’s good to remind drivers that EVs are a solid bet for reducing your eco footprint. With emissions-optimized charging, that bet can pay ever higher returns.