A new study by an Indiana electric utility suggests that power companies could save millions of dollars as they prepare to charge large numbers of electric vehicles — even if EV adoption on their system isn’t yet high.
The analysis looked at the service territory of AES Indiana, a subsidiary of global power firm AES Corp. that serves Indianapolis. It considered what would happen if the utility changed the way it uses data and sets its rates.
EVs are different from other electric devices because each vehicle is essentially a big battery, with the potential to both load and offload electricity — a feature that could help solve grid problems. But building the grid infrastructure to provide additional electricity to charge vehicles is costly. Since utilities serve everyone, they need to avoid benefiting EV customers at the expense of those who don’t.
The study offers hypothetical scenarios that utilities could utilize to meet these challenges — approaches that no power company has fully tried. The analysis was co-published by Camus Energy, a five-year-old startup based in San Francisco that operates on more than $25 million of venture capital funding.
