Bidgely Engage+ Episode 4: Ft. Puget Sound Energy and Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC)

[Music] foreign [Music] gauge plus I'm Neil Strother I'm coming to you today from St Louis Missouri where the secc is holding its annual fall workshop I'll be speaking with Heather Mulligan from Puget Sound Energy she'll be talking about Transportation electrification programs at that utility I'll also be speaking with Nathan Shannon the CEO of the secc and we'll be talking about EVS as well [Music] well Heather thanks a lot for joining us here today I'm really excited to hear about what's happening at Puget Sound Energy and your electrification plans around Transportation so Puget Sound Energy is a utility located up in Washington state a very Green State in more ways than one we cover most of Western Washington and we have some very Progressive green-minded companies who are really looking to make a difference in the world so they expect their utility to help them you know the Puget Sound area is very environmentally friendly can you talk a little bit about how that that impetus informs what you're doing in your long-term plans for Net Zero Puget Sound Energy has an aspirational goal of being Beyond Net Zero by 2045 and so what that really means is that we're going to take every step we can to reduce carbon from our electric and gas sources we believe that we need to go together with our customers to achieve these Beyond Net Zero goals it really is going to be a partnership working hand in hand with Puget Sound Energy helping to provide solutions to these customers to achieve their own goals as well as the goals of the region customers are really looking to reduce their carbon footprint and obviously transportation is a major driver for that carbon footprint are there particular municipalities or some of their needs that intersect with what you're doing and can you talk a little bit about what you've discovered with them so we've been reaching out to a lot of our very green municipalities with sustainability plans to figure out how we can help them to achieve that through the energy that they're using and their transportation electrification plans how can we provide charging solutions that allow them to Electrify their fleets the schools in their Community businesses in their Community all of that makes a big difference but we're not going to get there alone we do need to work together with our customers tell us a bit about the transportation electrification program at BSE so POC launched our first Transportation electrification programs back in 2018 with the set of five Pilots to help our customers to Electrify and charge their vehicles at home where they work or out in the public and since then we've been working to build on those Pilots take what we've learned and offer new services to fill in the gaps and talk a little bit about how you reached out to that community in in terms of getting their input and their understanding of where the market is and where they could be in that we thought it was really important to hear directly from the customers that we were trying to serve so we reached out and set up some Community engagement with the service providers and then with the customers that we were trying to serve through these products and services we've been trying to get out there more in the community and talk to our customers unfortunately with covid ride and drives are not what they used to be so we've had to be a little more creative Innovative on how we approach those customers things like virtual ride and drives incentives to encourage customers to get out there and try to test drive a vehicle through directly through the dealership but also providing web tools for our customers so that they can understand the total cost of ownership and what that would look like for them so tell us a little bit about what you've done with the community feedback you got and how that's informing your your current plans start first by reaching out to the community-based organizations that serve our highly impacted communities and vulnerable populations to understand what they're hearing from those people that they serve around electric vehicles if anything right but what what do they know so really interviewing them talking to them about what they're hearing and then we take that to the next step and we actually talk to through workshops and focus groups we're actually talking to the customers that we're trying to serve to better understand their high level needs and how we can best help support them in this transition it's an iterative process we're taking the information that they're providing us and we're using that to inform product design and then we're taking that product design back to these same populations and asking them for more feedback and making sure that we're hearing them and really bringing their input into the process can you talk about maybe the top two or three specific either barriers or issues or myths that are kind of holding them back that that help you kind of like okay how can we get them beyond that barrier or that issue the number one barrier is definitely cost and so we understand that we're going to need to not only provide the infrastructure for them to charge and to see that they have charging Solutions where they need them but that they also have support in purchasing vehicles or maybe it's not even a vehicle maybe it's a an electric bike or an electric scooter so that they can get to the transit center where hopefully there will be an electric bus waiting for them to get them where they need to go what have you learned about what customers expect when they're charging an EV if they've never had to do it at home or at a I think one of the important things to remember is that if somebody doesn't have charging available to them at home then they're going to need to find alternatives for that charging and if they're reliant on public charging then it's going to cost that consumer probably more public charging is a wonderful asset to have out there when people are traveling and they need to charge up quickly on their Journey or as they're driving around during the day but as a single source for charging that can be the more expensive way to go and so there's an equity issue there we need to make sure that everybody has access to level two charging where they can plug in at night or when they can take more time to get that full charge and then they can use the public charging system to supplement that in the back to work scenario post covet or whatever whatever we want to call the Euro we're in now have you seen transportation change and how does how do EVS fit into this kind of some people work part-time in the office not they're at home how has that changed kind of the map that you're looking at we launched a pilot program in 2019 expecting to do 50 workplace charging sites and 25 multi-family charging sites this was just really getting underway as covid hit and what we very quickly saw was that people weren't in the workplace anymore and that a lot of those property managers just didn't even know what their future was going to look like so that was interesting but then we also were seeing a lot more interest than we had anticipated from the multi-family sector and we quickly had to Pivot and put more emphasis on putting charging in those multi-family properties and and backing off a little on the workplace we still think workplaces really an important segment to me you know there's still people going into offices maybe not as frequently but when they go they want to have those charging resources so we're going to continue to focus on how we can support that but I think right now it's more important to focus on making sure that everybody has a charging solution at home um out in the public and then really focusing on those fleets because those Fleet managers are ready to move now talk a little bit now on the the charging piece in the home and and in multi-family situations how do I charge it at home yeah we're launching a set of programs in 2023 focused on expanding access for multi-family customers because it is easier for somebody living in a single-family residential home to think about how they're going to charge their vehicle even if they don't have a level 2 charger they probably have access to a plug where they can even do it on a 110 outlet but for the multi-family customer you know that that feels more Out Of Reach for them we're also learning that for a multi-family customer there needs to be some flexibility in the charging infrastructure that's available to them in some cases those folks are shift workers and so their hours are very different than you know the traditional nine to five work days so they need to know that when they come home they have a charger to plug into and that their rates are going to be the same as if they were charging at home so we want to make sure that everybody feels that they have access to charging so we're going to be working to put charging into those multi-family properties in in partnership with of course the multi-family property managers but what we're finding is that a lot of those property managers you know this is not the thing that they do day to day they don't know where to start or it's just not something that they want to spend a lot of time thinking about so if we can come in and partner with them and make it easy then that's ideal and we're going to have options for them we can either come in and do the make ready and they can own the charging assets or we can come in and do the whole package for them and own and maintain those charges but regardless we're going to make sure that those customers of both the property manager and Puget Sound Energy have access to charging where they live okay so we know that an inflection point is coming in terms of EV charging how is Puget Sound Energy planning to handle that increased load so we already have 70 000 electric vehicles on the road in Washington state and our governor has you know put a stake in the ground and said that there's going to be a lot more in fact every new vehicle sold will need to be EV by you know a certain date so we need to start thinking about that impact on the grid and how we manage for that and we are giving a lot of thought to load management how do you help consumers to charge off peak through a residential pilot program we tested how incentives would work for encouraging our customers to charge off-peak and we took a lot of good information away from that pilot that we'll be using to really think through how we continue to offer solutions to customers to encourage that off-peak charging that's going to be really important with fleets as well as you see more fleets electrifying you know they they come back to the yard at night but they don't all need to plug in at the same time so how can those fleets manage their their charging to get the best value for both the customer and to support the grid infrastructure so as we wrap up here any key takeaways for other utilities who are on this journey as well yes absolutely utilities need to provide solutions for all of their customers and make sure that they don't leave anybody behind and in order to do that I think it's really important to hear directly from those customers understand what their needs are and meet them where they're at and then I think we'll all be successful that was very informative what Heather is doing with Puget Sound Energy and their transportation electrification program now we'll find out from Nathan what the research shows from what consumers want in EVS so tell me a little bit about the latest research on EVS that you've come across so this last study was fielded at the end of 2021 released in January and it was a look into adopters and non-adopters of electric vehicles was there any big surprise or surprises in that survey that that came back that you said well I didn't really think of that or didn't see that coming those of us are in this industry we always assume that people know more about energy technology than they do so my biggest surprise was the fact that only about 26 percent of people actually knew someone with an EV so these are the folks that don't drive any only 26 percent even knew a family member a friend a colleague A co-worker that had an EV and only about 17 percent had written in one and nine percent have driven one so I was just surprised at how low that number was in a previous research that wouldn't have surprised me but for 2022 I was thinking at this point more people had experience with electric vehicles than they did anything else jump out mainly just not knowing how to work Chargers it wasn't even the access to a charger there is that issue in rural areas but a lot of people just had a fear of not knowing how to operate them with many different apps that you may need on your phone and the hooks that didn't really understand they could have a charger at home a lot of people didn't even know that that was an option yeah that is a bit surprising but consumers had very very little knowledge of it even some of the customers of the Thousand that we surveyed that had an EV had confusion between Quick Charge level one level two that type of thing there definitely needs to be more education on the charging levels and even there were consumers that we talked to that had an electric vehicle that they didn't understand that when you're just plugging it into 110 volt outlet that car is going to take 15 20 hours to charge that was a little bit of a shock to people who are looking to purchase an EV they even or even the ones that had an EV they didn't realize that it was that lengthy of time unless you actually install that level to uh charger so um I don't I haven't seen a lot of Education just on charging in general and that was one of the areas that I really think could uh use a lot of assistance so it sounds like there is that impetus or that need for utilities and their Partners to really get the message out there that that you think people know about EVs and many different yeah we assume that they assume that yeah right yeah definitely a large education Gap one is experience in that electric vehicle if we can get people to experience it the adoption I think would be through the roof compared to what it is right now so yeah EV Drive events I know a lot of utility isn't especially cooperatives cooperatives have been I think the most Innovative where you can take an EB home overnight or um you know just test out charging they'll even show you they'll have like lessons on how to charge what this is like that whole experience so I've seen a lot of cooperatives basic blocking and tackling right and I think you're right I think the Cooperators tend to be a little more down to earth or or they can you know be more flexible yeah a little more Nimble exactly looking kind of the survey and thinking maybe longer term any thoughts on where the market or where you think the adoption will be in 5 10 20 years we're looking at almost 50 percent of the customers we're surveying saying that within the next three years they're interested in getting an electric vehicle I could see you within five years adoption rates definitely having a big jump just mainly because of the types of electric vehicles that are coming out right now the fact that they're offering cars that look like a internal combustion engine car that's helping the adoption rate jump uh jump up quite a bit so I would think that you know the manufacturers the utilities you know all the all the people in this value chain um this this next you know three to five years looks pretty opportunistic definitely I mean there's tons of people on a waiting list right now waiting to get Ford lightning or other I mean there's several that are out there that people are dying to get their hands on so I think the waiting lists alone show that there's increased interest I was a little surprised that I think the South Region had a little stronger adoption did you notice that Georgia in particular had an extremely high adoption rate because we had a very generous tax credit a few years back it was a on top of the 7 500 Federal Credit you got an additional five thousand dollars a tax credit from the state so with that combined it was almost a no-brainer to get an EV or you even have get counted on a lease too so it made it very very affordable to at least and I think that's what really of the adoption and then that the all the folks that ended up getting an EV it basically forced the infrastructure of charging to be installed quicker I think than a lot of other states but there could be another reason for the South being pretty high adoption because South has pretty reliable grid and it's a newer grid we don't have a lot of outages really less than the Northeast the Northeast is the oldest Grid in the US so they're going to have the most issues when it comes to maybe longer outages that could affect your charging after all the research you've done what would be a big takeaway for utilities that are just starting on this journey or still getting their feet wet I think the biggest thing for utilities to recognize is that customers are not a monolith they want to they need to Target their marketing and Outreach and education to the customers who are in that moment are looking to purchase an EV so personalization around the messaging is very important so if there's any data that a utility could use to Target mess messaging to customers or just Target educational components about electric vehicles I would say that's the biggest takeaway I mean with usage data if they are able to understand and tell that that person is they're charging a car or or what times they're charging a car the offering rates that can help them with saving energy around those times is so important so the personalization side is kind of what we can't stress enough when it comes to EVs and just getting that educational component out there yeah it sounds like it's an opportunity too for utilities to really hone in on that rate if you will and really help the user that has a new Eevee when to charge how that's going to affect their bill et cetera et cetera customers love that they love that tangible look into okay if I now I have an EV if I charge my EB three nights a week this is what my bill is going to look like and it's a good comparison for them too to say you know I spent x amount on gas for my combustion car now I'm sending this on electricity and it's a gateway to other engagement too for utilities the customers that already has the EV really they're that low hanging fruit that a utility could talk to you about more engagement signing up for programs because they're already very engaged with their energy usage it's something that they're thinking about already as an EB owner I think you made a good point it seems like you know a smart utility would give those kind of consistent but friendly nudges of information that that helps that consumer and and that it just builds more trust and you say oh you're interested you have an EV would you be interested in solar or vice versa right exactly follow our storage smart thermostat programs any kind of connected home devices those are the folks that are going to be the easy ones to Market to you want to play the future game with me any thoughts on when you see a a pretty major inflection point in EV adoption I mean I think we're at it right now I I would say maybe within the next year if we can continue to do some of the educational um work that I was talking about that type of area will or that type of work will really increase adoption within the next year so I think we're kind of at a good precipice for some a big spike in the adoption just within the next year or so thank you for joining us at visually engaged plus I really enjoyed it I hope you did too I'll see it next time from Duquesne Light