ATMs for Electricity – And How They Could Endanger Unsuspecting Utilities

.

EV charging is faced with two big issues:

1)     Who to bill. If you plug in at a public charging station, how does the bill get back to the vehicle owner?

2)     When to do the charging. If many people plug in at the same time, how do you smooth out the charging to avoid blowing a transformer or contributing to a peak event?

Back in the early days of EV brainstorming the initial three approaches were smart

More on EV charging …

Utility Pitfalls: The Disturbing New Face of Smart Grid Vendor Lock-In

EV Charging Companies Partner Up for Expansion and New Pilots

California Awards $3.4 Million to Coulomb Technologies for EV Charging Stations

Charged Up: Early EV Enthusiasts Will Find a Way

Electric Transportation trends and technologies

cars, smart plugs, or smart chargers (infrastructure). The smart charger approach has won for backroom reasons too byzantine to recount here. (But if you see me after hours at a conference, I'll bring the war stories if you buy the beer.)

The resulting solution is a lot like an ATM for electricity. You pull up and identify your vehicle in any of several ways. The charging station authenticates you, turns on the juice, and bills your credit card.

Solving two issues … and raising three more

Coulomb Technologies’ ChargePoint Network solves the two issues above, but raises three new ones:

1)     Disintermediation

2)     Vendor lock-in

3)     Pittock problem

Disintermediation. In Ireland and many other countries, EV charging is offered through the utility. In the U.S., it has been rolling out via private networks. Customers will have a branded relationship with the charging network, not with the utility. That’s fine for “wires only” utilities that focus on delivery and leave the retail relationship to others (as with Centerpoint in Texas). But for most other utilities, it raises the specter of disintermediation, as I discussed recently in “How the Smart Grid Tsunami Could Destroy Utilities.” Competitors gradually chip away, taking away first one, then another, then another customer relationship (and skimming the profits). It’s not hard to picture a day when customers’ loyalties lie with (let’s say) Microsoft Hohm, EnerNOC and ChargePoint, not with the utility that supplies the electrons.

Vendor lock-in. Hundreds of companies compete worldwide to make EVs and PHEVs. Dozens compete to make the physical charging stations. But only one company currently ships (at quantity in the U.S.) the all-important software that networks charging spots together and makes them smart – and that’s Coulomb.

Imagine there was only a single credit card processor. Do you think processing fees and interest rates might be even higher if Visa had zero competition? Call me cynical, but I think it is dangerous to be at the mercy of a single supplier, no matter how well meaning.

Now let’s suppose that viable competitors do emerge. Then you face the Pittock problem.

The Pittock problem. Nestled in the West Hills of Portland is a mansion once home to tycoon Henry Pittock. Tour the palatial building, completed in 1914, and you’ll notice that certain rooms have two side-by-side phones. Portland had two rival -- and incompatible -- phone companies in its early days. To oversee his banking, publishing, and real estate empire, Pittock had to install two separate phone systems.

Today’s utilities could face the same situation. It’s not hard to imagine the local UPS truck fleet using one system and the downtown parking garages another. Does the utility then face the pain of supporting both? And what happens when Wal-Mart chooses a third system for its parking lots? And Fed-Ex a fourth?

About Coulomb Technologies

Coulomb is in its current enviable position because it figured out early where things were going, pulled together a strong team of Silicon Valley veterans, and systematically tackled the tough problems. The resulting ChargePoint Network has all sorts of utility-centric goodies, from 24x7 technical support and network operating centers, built-in demand response, remote diagnostics, secure transaction processing, even a nifty iPhone app that shows drivers the closest available station.

Despite Coulomb’s feature set and early market lead, I expect competitors to emerge. Take a look at these recent announcements and you’ll see a few of the possibilities:

Photo credit: Coulomb Technologies

·         Silver Spring Networks and ClipperCreek’s pilot EV charging program with PG&E

·         Schneider Electric plans a “portfolio” of EV charging solutions

·         GE introduces smart grid-compatible EV charger

·         Ecotality awarded $100 million for transportation electrification (PDF)

Other potential competitors, such as Siemens and Gridpoint, are working as Coulomb partners today. Still others, such as Ecotality and Better Place, are doing the “co-opetition” thing, making sure that they can support ChargePoint cars at their charging stations and vice versa. And various groups are working to overcome the current controversy over incompatible plugs for fast charging.

It’s terrific that these organizations are working to make life easier for consumers. But shouldn’t they be watching out for utilities too?

And therein lies our solution. Utilities must insist on standards to allow information from any charging station to flow seamlessly into their backend systems. Those utilities determined to be pioneers must seek commitments from their vendors to retrofit those standards as soon as they emerge.

We may soon have worldwide standards for plugging cars into charging stations. Shouldn’t we also insist on standards for plugging charging stations into utilities?

Stay connected with SGN …

Smart Grid Discussions: Get LinkedIn with Jesse

Smart Grid on Facebook

Follow Us on Twitter

Try our RSS feed