Full Report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vc9TXVFj3koxK-DcaoEm2fQLjG14jrQh/view?usp=sharing

Over the last month, a few friends and I have been working on a product proposal that will help prepare the electric grid for the mass adoption of electric vehicles, while also making EV charging as cheap as possible. Our product is an app called FreEV – an opt-in demand response program for electric vehicle owners.

The number of electric vehicles are expected to increase from 2 million to 18 million in the next decade. By 2050, models predict that there will be upwards of 200 million electric vehicles on the road. Electric vehicles draw power on the scale of a household. Typical chargers are rated at about 10kW and each full charge pulls about three days worth of energy for a household. With this predicted increase in the number of electric vehicles and the significant amount of power each EV uses, our electric grid is going to be redefined by the needs EV charging in the near future.

Not only will the grid need to have ways to deal with significantly more load demand in general, but it will also need to be prepared to meet peak load demand at different times of the day. Peak load refers to a period of time when the total load on the grid exceeds what the utility is currently generating. At these times, the utility must have solutions to generate slightly more power for a few hours to meet demand. This is manageable because peak loads times are generally predictable. They consistently fall in the evening hours when most people return home and have various appliances and electronics running. With the increased number of electric vehicles, this will gradually become less predictable. EV owners will be charging their cars at home, but some owners may charge their car immediately after arriving, others may charge their cars at night to lower their electricity bill, and some may just charge their car at work. This becomes even more complex with the advent of smart charging, where each electric vehicle charger will be optimizing for the lowest cost to charge their vehicle. These factors will make peak load difficult to predict in advance. Utilities will need ways to respond quickly when peak load occurs.

Our solution is to create a network of electric vehicles that the utility can pause from charging during peak load times in exchange for the paused vehicle owners to get free hours of charging after. This concept of temporarily turning of someone’s power in exchanged for a monetary compensation is called demand response. From our calculations, we can get owners in our network half of their monthly electric vehicle charging for free. Owners can opt into the app and schedule when they’d like their vehicle to be participating in the network, and we’d only ever allow cars with sufficient levels of charge to be paused from charging. This is all made possible through the established system of capacity contracts with the utility. These contracts compensates us for providing the utility a method of dealing with peak load.

By providing the flexibility necessary to meet growing electricity demand from electric vehicles, we believe FreEV will help the electric grid adapt to the needs of the future. Below are links to our proposal and our presentation if you’d like to learn more about the specifics of our product. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions about the product, and we hope you’re as excited as we are to be entering such an exciting time in the world of energy.