California Public Power Utilities To Participate In DOE “Vehicle to Everything” Initiative

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 25, 2022

The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and partners on April 20 announced the Vehicle to Everything (V2X) memorandum of understanding (MOU), which will bring together resources from DOE, DOE national labs, state and local governments, utilities, and private entities to evaluate technical and economic feasibility as the country integrates bidirectional charging into energy infrastructure.

Included among the MOU signatories are two public power utilities — Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

The MOU will also advance cybersecurity as a core component of V2X charging infrastructure, DOE said.

Bidirectional plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) “present immense potential for increasing the country’s energy security, resilience, economic vitality, and quality of life while supporting the electrical grid. A bidirectional EV fleet could serve as both a sustainable mobility option as well as an energy storage asset that sends power back to everything from critical loads and homes to the grid. A bidirectional fleet could also create new revenue opportunities for EV owners or fleets,” DOE said.

DOE also announced that it is tackling the technical challenges and barriers to the integration of tens of millions of EVs with the electric grid, commonly referred to as Vehicle Grid Integration (VGI) through the EVs@scale lab consortium.

The consortium brings together six DOE national laboratories to conduct RD&D in the areas of smart charge management, high power charging and facilities, dynamic wireless charging, codes and standards, and cyber physical security.

In addition to addressing the near-term challenges to VGI to benefit all electric vehicle (EV) stakeholders, the lab consortium will conduct high risk, high reward research on the EV charging and grid integration technologies the U.S. will need in the future, according to DOE.

DOE said that this collaboration can accelerate and enable bidirectional PEV integration into the electrical grid by:

• Identifying and resolving barriers
• Accelerating commercialization and customer adoption
• Factoring in security by design and improving coordination between the electric and automotive sectors through establishing cybersecure bidirectional charging station demonstrations,
• Collecting and analyzing demonstration data, and
• Preparing technoeconomic analyses to evaluate the business case for V2X.

Click here for the MOU.