Nick Woolley says the one pain point of owning an EV – charging it – is actually an opportunity.
During a visit to Silicon Valley in 2015, Nick Woolley realized that the many Teslas he saw whizzing past him were not just new cars, they could also be distributed energy resources. He was working for National Grid in his native England at the time, but he couldn’t shake the idea that EVs could provide demand flexibility to the grid in a way that could benefit drivers and utilities alike.
In 2018, he founded ev.energy to develop a platform for managed EV charging using real-time, dynamic price signals. Today, ev.energy works with utilities, drivers, and charger manufacturers to automate EV charging in order to shift demand from peak hours and reward drivers in the process.
This week on With Great Power, Nick Woolley talks about the ChargeWise pilot program in California, which is using dynamic price signals to optimize EV charging. So far, it has saved consumers more money than time-of-use rates while evening out grid demand. Nick also describes what it would mean to scale dynamic charging nationwide.
Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.
Brad Langley: If you happen to recently buy an electric vehicle in the US, you might've been racing to try and lock in a federal EV tax credit before it expired.
News clips: If you are thinking about getting an electric vehicle, do not procrastinate. Yeah, it's because those tax credits are coming to an end. Once September ends, buying an electric vehicle is going to be more expensive.
Brad Langley: Yep, the EV tax credits were supposed to end in 2032, but the recent GOP tax and spending bill pushed that deadline out to the end of September. Thankfully, there are still incentives for home chargers, which are useful for more than just powering a car. They also allow EVs to be used as a distributed energy resource in a virtual power plant. And a decade ago, that idea that electric vehicles could be DERs hit Nick Woolley like a ton of bricks.
Nick Woolley: I spent some time out in the Bay Area around 2016, 2015, and there were Teslas on the road everywhere. And with my software background, I was looking at this and thinking, wow, this is a window on the future. This is going to be happening in the UK, Germany, everywhere in the world. And secondly, it's like with some software, we could connect these assets up and we could do some great things for the grid.
Brad Langley: At the time, Nick was a strategy manager at National Grid in his native England, and the company was interested in California – not so much for its EVs, but for its solar energy and storage innovations.
Nick Woolley: They observed the big transition towards decentralized energy. And one of the things they set up was this strategic partnership actually with a company in the United States called Sunrun to explore the value of decentralized energy. They understand the grid, and Sunrun had a lot of solar rooftop and storage assets that they were deploying. And could you take those two things together and then accelerate the rollout of virtual power plants?
Brad Langley: It got him thinking about all those Teslas he'd seen in the Bay Area. The potential to use those as DERs was stunning.
Nick Woolley: He started doing the math, and quite quickly you're into ridiculous levels of load that you could control and lots of value that you could create for energy companies across the globe.
Brad Langley: So in early 2018, Nick founded ev.energy. Like any startup, it was a big risk, but this wasn't his first rodeo.
Nick Woolley: My first job was basically working for myself as an entrepreneur, scaling a software company, and it was a great first experience. The big learning was like anybody can found a business if they want to. Even as a first job.
Brad Langley: Nick had actually started that company back in 2001, which was also his first year as an undergrad at the University of Oxford where he studied engineering. He ran the business until 2010, but in 2008 he decided to go back to school to dive deeper into engineering.
Nick Woolley: So yeah, always been drawn to that, always excited by it. I just think it's a lot of fun solving problems and that's what you get to do by being an engineer.
Brad Langley: By 2011, he had a PhD from the University of Manchester in data mining and power network engineering. Then in 2015 he joined National Grid. Three years later he founded ev.energy, and despite never working as an engineer, he says his training has been integral to his time in the energy sector.
Nick Woolley: I think it's just such a fantastic place. There's this huge transformational change and that creates massive opportunities for people like me who want to use technology to solve problems. And I think it's such fertile ground.
Brad Langley: Fertile ground for all kinds of innovations aimed at easing the clean energy transition for consumers, but particularly for helping drivers optimize how and when they charge their electric vehicles.
Nick Woolley: Which is basically the number one pain point about owning an electric vehicle: how am I going to recharge this thing? And we help them to turn that into a massive opportunity where they basically get paid to charge their electric vehicle every day.
Brad Langley: It's these kinds of solutions that form the foundation of ev.energy's broader clean energy goals, goals that Nick believes are increasingly attainable.
Nick Woolley: We as a society face this massive transition that we need to go on to decarbonize both the energy system and on the other side, the transport system as well. The good news is we're on a path to decarbonize both. The die has been cast and we will accelerate towards that future.
Brad Langley: This is With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid. Today, I'm Brad Langley. Some people say utilities are slow to change, that they don't innovate fast enough. And while it might not seem like the most cutting edge industry, there are lots of really smart people working really hard to make the grid cleaner, more reliable, and customer centric. Today my guest is Nick Woolley, founder and CEO of ev.energy. We talk about how the company is applying dynamic pricing to EV charging, what it means for drivers as well as utilities, and what ev.energy and its partners learned from a Bay Area pilot to test dynamic pricing in a managed charging system. But first I asked Nick to give us the backstory on that program called Charge Wise, which also involves two community choice aggregators, Silicon Valley Clean Energy and MCE.
Nick Woolley: Charge Wise is supported by the California Energy Commission. And then we have a number of the energy, the CCAs, working with us very collaboratively. And then of course the big other party that's involved is drivers like you or I who want to enroll and participate. So it's a consortium that was pulled together around the California Energy Commission call to get more dynamic rates across California, working in better ways for citizens of California. And yeah, we have been working furiously on that over the last couple of years.
Brad Langley: Maybe taking a quick step back, for those who might not be familiar with it, what is dynamic pricing in managed electric vehicle charging?
Nick Woolley: Yeah, so dynamic pricing is the ability to send a signal that reflects the local price of energy. So the big challenge with energy is we have to balance demand and supply in real time. The two have to be exactly balanced and they're moving up and down on either side in real time. If we ask for more supply, like in the early evening, the price of energy rises because we have to turn on expensive energy resources to meet the ramp down of solar in the early evening and we have to fill that in from something else. And so what dynamic pricing enables is you link in a signal from the energy system and then control and manage a resource like an electric vehicle in tandem with that signal. So we get a signal from the energy system which tells us what the price of electricity is at any one moment in time. And then if the price of electricity is low, in theory we charge electric vehicles, and if the price of electricity is high, we avoid charging electric vehicles. And the Charge Wise project is all about trying to ensure that electric vehicles are more responsive to those real time signals that are available from the grid, because the reality is, the grid at the moment, the signals that we get are relatively static. So we have fixed time of use rates that do not respond in real time to needs and issues that are happening on the grid.
Brad Langley: And so then maybe now that we have that context, what is ev.energy specifically doing with the CEC grant? And maybe as part of that, talk us through the technology and consumer interface. What are people seeing? What's the experience like?
Nick Woolley: So an enrollee within the Charge Wise program downloads an app from their energy utility. They connect their electric vehicle or charger to the program. And what we do is they tell us one thing, which is when they want their electric vehicle charged for every single day. And in the background, what we do is they come home, you plug in your electric vehicle, Brad, you say you want to get your electric vehicle charged for, say, 7:00 AM the next morning. We send you a message to say, "Hey Brad, we're going to be dynamically optimizing your electricity consumption in tandem with real time electricity signals. And by the way, you're going to earn money tonight by charging your electric vehicle." And we then pause and resume charging for the best times for the grid based on the local grid constraints that exist within that local area and then also based on the real time market price. And if the market price is under your time of use rate, we then pay you to charge your electric vehicle. We're aiming to get you fully participating in the energy markets with no effort whatsoever. So you just basically set it, forget it, and as a result you get a reward for doing the right thing and you feel great about charging your electric vehicle.
Brad Langley: Now that must be a pretty complex process, especially as it pertains to real-time dynamic pricing to do all that backend calculation. How is that happening and how do you make that seamless to the customer? As we know, people aren't really thinking about the amount of energy they use or when they use it, so obviously there's a lot of work that you guys do to make that clear. What technology is being used or what processes are being used to make it seamless to the customer?
Nick Woolley: So the core of what we do as ev.energy is we are a platform that integrates deeply within the energy system, so we understand what's happening at the local level inside your home, and we might also connect to other energy devices like solar panels, like batteries. We understand what's going on at the local grid area on your distribution circuit. We also understand what's going on on the CAISO market price. And we take all of those inputs together and then we control and manage your electric vehicle charging to maximize the benefits. For a partner like MCE, behind the scenes, from the user's perspective, they plug in their electric vehicle, they know that their electric vehicle is being... we may pause and resume charging several times overnight to ensure that it charges at the best time for the grid. They don't have to think about any of the real time pricing.
The economic theory says that we want everybody to be a rational agent within the energy system and therefore we should give them real time pricing. I don't believe that anybody wants to know what the real time price is. I probably couldn't tell you unfortunately, even though I work in this industry, what the real time price is now at my home. And I don't believe anybody wants to know that. I believe people want to know that things are taking that into account, and that's where technology can really play a huge role in doing that heavy lifting. And that's what ev.energy does behind the scenes. We calculate how much energy you need to put into your electric vehicle and do the optimization for you.
Brad Langley: And as a result of that, I've seen you guys have published some pretty compelling results from this effort. So let's talk through some of the key results and learnings. First off, what was the economic impact for drivers?
Nick Woolley: We can typically save drivers around $200 a year by cutting overall costs. And then if you align that with distribution signals as well, you could maybe get up to about a thousand dollars a year. So it is significant savings on your energy bill. Now, energy prices in California are significant already, so you're already paying quite a lot for your energy to go into your electric vehicle. But yeah, we can enable the savings of that order of magnitude to go out to drivers.
Brad Langley: What about the CCA partners? What have they taken away or benefited from this?
Nick Woolley: So the CCA partners need to... there's a number of different bits of value they get. First bit of value is actually around the consumer experience and just delivering a really good consumer experience. They really love the ability to be able to engage with more of their customers. And then the other bit of value that they can create is through optimizing what we call the stack of services that you can deliver through managing electric vehicle charging. So one of the things that CCAs, for example, have to do is they have to procure resource adequacy, which means they have to procure capacity within the market. They can avoid procuring that capacity by shifting load to the right points in time, because then you're not charging as much load at peak times when you would otherwise have to procure expensive resources. And you can also shift the load to times when you also have more of your own generation available on the local energy system, which is good for them because that's a consumer benefit and that's another one of the reasons why they exist, and it's also good for them in terms of the overall procurement cost of energy.
Brad Langley: How about any key learnings that you've taken away from this and how consumers interact with their cars and how they approach electric rates?
Nick Woolley: Yeah, so I think lots of learnings through the years as ev.energy has grown. I think consumers, the big thing that we've always had front and center of our mission is keeping things super straightforward for consumers. Consumers really care about it being reliable, it delivering for when they need their car. And if you do all of that, you can, I think, deliver some really compelling outcomes for consumers. And I think with ChargeWise, the other thing that we've done is we've designed it to be as much as possible a carrot rather than a stick for consumers. I think one of the big trade-offs with time of use rates is it's kind of like, well, we could charge you more for electricity here, but we'll give you a slightly cheaper rate over here. It's like you're kind of being penalized for putting your oven on in the early evening and you're trying to work out, is that trade off worthwhile for me? With something like ChargeWise, it's all like, well, if the electricity rates fall under your energy rate today, you will get an incentive and you'll get paid out. And that's just a pure incentive, which actually customers really, really like because there's no sense of downside against it.
Brad Langley: So ev.energy is also participating in a three-year pilot with PG&E, which is called the Hourly Flex Pricing pilot. For disclosure, GridX is also involved in that pilot program. Tell me how and why ev.energy got involved in that effort and what you're hoping to get out of it.
Nick Woolley: Yeah, so similarly to Charge Wise, it's about bringing dynamic signals right down to the grid edge so that we can optimize rates for drivers and deliver value across the energy system. I think the super exciting thing about working in collaboration with PG&E on this is obviously PG&E operates the poles and wires. The poles and wires are a huge source... If we can ensure that electric vehicles are charging at the right points in time, we do not need to build as much poles and wires, which we will have to build enormous amounts of poles and wires over the coming decades regardless. But if we can make better use of those poles and wires, then we can manage energy around the capacity that's available and that's super exciting. Similar in regards to the work that we've been doing with Charge Wise, around the consumer experience it's very similar. You come home, you plug in your electric vehicle, you get fully charged for when you need it, but then in the background we're optimizing around those hourly flex rates.
Brad Langley: I think there's this kind of perception that dynamic pricing is more of a California phenomenon, but do you see this playing out in other states? And if so, what would be the potential impacts as dynamic pricing becomes more prevalent across the country?
Nick Woolley: I think yeah, California has led the US in terms of the rollout of time of use rates and some of the dynamic pricing stuff that we're talking about today. I think the fundamentals though are what you want is you want demand flexibility responding in real time to the conditions on the energy system. And so that's the outcome that we want, if you like. Dynamic pricing is a tool to get to an outcome, which is if we had all of this demand flexibility responding in real time to what's happening within the energy system, then that would be super beneficial for everybody. So we did some research on this just recently. By 2035, we could help to reduce energy costs, the cost per kilowatt hour of energy by about 10% across the US if we unlock the power of electric vehicles, the 75 million electric vehicles that'll be on the road by 2035.
And that creates value for energy utilities, it creates value for consumers, electric vehicle owners and all the rate payers as well by the way, because we're helping to reduce the overall cost of energy for everybody. If you have automation around dynamic rates, I think that can be the real key ingredient and the ideal mix, because what you can get then is you can get a dynamic rate signal that's being provided to, say, an electric vehicle with the electric vehicle responding in real time to that dynamic signal that's only benefiting the user's electric vehicle rate, and then the rest of their energy, which is not that shiftable could potentially stay on a flat rate, for example. So are dynamic rates in their entirety going to roll out to every home across the US? I don't know, but I don't know that that matters because I think you can deliver the outcome that you want, which is the dynamic nature of the rate targeted towards the flexibility, which is the key thing that if we get right, we can unlock all of those savings that I was talking about with demand flexibility across the US.
Brad Langley: Yeah, I think that's a great point. It doesn't have to be dynamic rates, even time of use rates could be viable here as well. I mean it's more defined blocks of time, but if you're automating the process of shifting charging outside of those peak times, that is sufficient. Correct?
Nick Woolley: Yeah, no, I think actually, so a great question on could it be time of use versus dynamic time of use. I actually don't think that will prevail because time of use creates... it's a good first order block shift, but then it creates these additional secondary, what we call timer peaks with electric vehicles occurring on the local grid because everybody then sets their electric vehicle to come on at like 11:00 PM and those secondary peaks can quickly exceed the primary peak that you were trying to mitigate, in which case you're actually increasing costs for consumers faster than if you just did nothing beforehand. And so I actually do agree with you that some dynamic rate behind the scene needs to filter through to the device to enable that device to then charge or discharge at the right times for the energy system. It's just the mechanism to do it behind the scenes ideally is automated so consumers don't have to necessarily read the runes of the energy system every single day to interoperate in these programs.
Brad Langley: Nick, I understand you guys have recently unveiled a managed charging playbook. Can you maybe talk us through some of the key findings or takeaways in that?
Nick Woolley: Yeah, sure. So we recently did some research on demand flexibility in partnership with Brattle where we were trying to really get our hands around what is the value of demand flexibility specifically from electric vehicles and managing electric vehicle load in the right interests for utilities and consumers across the United States. We identified that we could potentially save, I mean it varies enormously by location, by utility, but potentially save around $575 in avoided costs for utilities by just implementing, pausing and resuming what we call V1G technologies, charging at the right times for the energy system. And that can additionally increase if you unlock technologies like V2X, where that number goes up to about $1,300 of benefits. And these are benefits that we can share with individual consumers who own electric vehicles, but then also other rate payers to help reduce electricity rates across the US. And as a result, we found that that could on aggregate, unlock about $30 billion in annualized savings and then also help to reduce energy rates for everybody by about 10% versus an alternative scenario, which is we actually increase energy rates as we make this transition happen, which is obviously what we want to all avoid.
Brad Langley: So obviously getting more electric vehicles on the road is incredibly important to expanding these programs, and yet we've seen EV tax credits expiring here in the US. So in terms of consumer incentives and engagement, what do you think it will take to ensure continued interest in electric vehicles?
Nick Woolley: Yeah, so I mean policy shifts have happened over the last 12 months that have definitely reduced the growth rates of electric vehicles. I would say that electric vehicles are still rolling out. There’s still a decent chunk of electric vehicle sales in the US. In Europe, it's a lot higher. They are continuing. People are buying electric vehicles because they're fundamentally better products. They are easier to drive, they're faster, they've got more technology inside them. And so the tax credits are definitely slowing down adoption right now, but longer term, it will continue to grow and scale. And whatever projection you look at, it's still colossal amounts of electric vehicles that we're going to have to be dealing with on the grid side of things. That means we need to be thinking about how we manage those devices now.
Brad Langley: We call this show With Great Power, which is a nod to the energy industry. It's also a famous Spider-Man quote: "With great power comes great responsibility." So Nick, what superpower do you bring to the energy transition?
Nick Woolley: Well, I'd like to think that ev.energy is setting out an optimistic vision for how we can integrate electric vehicles into the energy system. Demand flexibility is really the superpower. It's much, much bigger than ev.energy. That's 75 million electric vehicles. That's about a hundred gigawatts of load, at least. If we did loads more V2X, it's more than that. That's 25 of the biggest nuclear power stations. Palo Verde Generating Station is about four gigawatts. That's 25 of those that we could build by 2035. I mean, that is a colossal amount of capacity that we could unlock, and I think it's on all of us within the energy industry to work in partnership to make that happen. And if we get there, I think that will be a lower carbon energy system, one that's hopefully operating as cheaply as possible, which is in the best interest for all of us, and we'll be able to use all of these funky technologies in our day-to-day lives.
Brad Langley: Couldn't agree more. Awesome, Nick. Well thank you so much for the time today. Really enjoyed talking with you.
Nick Woolley: Thank you so much, Brad.
Brad Langley: Nick Woolley is the founder and CEO of ev.energy. With Great Power is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. Delivering on our clean energy future is complex. GridX exists to simplify the journey. GridX is the enterprise rate platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future. We design and implement emerging rate structures and we increase consumer investment in clean energy all while managing the complex billing needs of a distributed grid. Mary Catherine O'Connor is our producer. Anne Bailey is our senior editor. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and me, Brad Langley. If this show is providing value for you – and we really hope it is – we'd love it if you could help us spread the word. You can rate or review us on Apple and Spotify, or you could share a link with a friend, colleague, or the energy nerd in your life. As always, thanks for listening. I'm Brad Langley.