How PSE&G Is Powering New Jersey’s EV Future with Scalable, Equitable Infrastructure with Dawn Neville

Good morning Grid Connections listeners and welcome back to Grid Connections, the podcast where clean energy, electric vehicles, and the power grid converge. and as always brought to you by Grid Connections Consulting. In this episode, we sit down with Dawn Neville, the manager of electric transportation at PSEMG to explore how one of the largest utilities in the US is scaling electric vehicle infrastructure and accelerating the shift to cleaner transportation.

From utility managed charging programs to equitable access for multi-unit dwellings and underserved communities, Dawn shares how PSEMG is approaching grid upgrades, customer engagement, and statewide collaboration in New Jersey. Whether you're in policy, infrastructure, or just curious about major utilities and what they're planning for millions of electric vehicles, this episode offers actual insights and inspiration.

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with one friend or colleague who's passionate about clean transportation. And don't forget to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Plus, subscribe to our newsletter for more insights. Just follow the link in today's show notes. And with that, enjoy. Thank you very much for having me, Chase. I'm very excited about this opportunity.

So Dawn, for those listening who may not be familiar with your utility, can you share a little bit about PSEmG and then also then kind of share about what your team specifically is doing at the utility? Absolutely. PSE &G is New Jersey's largest electric and gas distribution company. We're the only one that distributes both electric and gas. We have 2.4 million electric customers and 1.9 million gas customers. And we serve a territory that basically runs the New Jersey Turnpike.

I like to say it's the beauty-polar sash from the left shoulder of Fort Lee down to the right hip of Trenton, Camden, and Burlington County. um I myself am the manager of electric transportation at PSE &G. I run our customer facing programs where we help customers with the cost of installing infrastructure to charge electric vehicles. I'm also the company's subject matter expert with respect to electric vehicle technology.

So I guess coming from the utility perspective, we've done a lot of mix things. It seems like a lot of it was just kind of that barrier to learn about electrification, learn how electric vehicles can become a net positive. But can you share maybe uh what you've learned being kind of introduced to electrification from the utility side and some of the things that you're excited about and kind of how that works with maybe the education you have to do possibly internally and even externally?

Yeah, well to start with on that question, Chase, five years ago, five and a half years ago, I was asked to take this role. At that time, I could barely spell EV. ah Didn't really know anything about the technology, but I'm one of those people that loves to learn new things and loves change. Both of those are a little rare, especially the love change.

uh But it's been a great chance for me to absolutely learn something new, starting from learning which hood ornaments were on which makes the manufacturers of cars. uh then learning levels of charging and learning just the basics.

From there, as we started to uh install chargers more frequently in our territory, teaching our utility what's different about electric charging versus just giving anybody else power and putting in processes for a brand new program in a utility that does 120 years worth of bringing power and has policies and procedures and processes that are hundreds of years old on purpose.

So educating internally has been part of this role and it has been required to, you know, I'd like to say I had to build a startup company inside a 120 year old utility. I mean, I'm sure. I feel like in my own experience with talking about electrification, electric vehicles, there's usually some sort of moment where it really clicks for people.

Have there been kind of a couple of things that especially you find that click for uh the utility and the people you work with internally, especially about why electrification, not necessarily that it's a positive thing. But it is kind part of that evolution of the utility industry. Yeah, I mean, on the personal side of people, you know, getting into an electric vehicle, whether it's their personal vehicle or it's one of our fleet vehicles, you know, used as part of the utilities day job.

um I think the misconceptions, they're getting better, but everybody initially has that fear of running out of fuel, running out of gas, running out of electric. And the first misconception, of course, is thinking you have to fuel your vehicle like you do your internal combustion engine or ice, you know, car. So just getting over the hurdle of our fleet staff understanding that they could do their job in an electric vehicle. We have had some great pilots.

We've found some great ambassadors internally of professionals that were interested in going. Those innovative people, those people that like change, and they've been the ones to run our pilot program and get the data that we need. we have found some hiccups, things like the weather impact on the battery in the range of that vehicle. So we're working through all of those. Leadership is very focused on, you know, they're interested in this.

They want to do it for both not only the climate change mitigation factor, but also the lower operating costs factor. But they need to make sure that we can deliver safe and reliable service. That's our primary business, right? We are in the business of keeping you in power. So um everybody is very concerned and I need to show them all of the data that proves that we can do our day job.

So I guess, is that the concern with, I mean, we talked a lot of different charging. To me it sounds like it is actually the concern, not necessarily from like the commercial side, all these like fast chargers going in, but it is actually the scale for residential and all these people adding this to their home. Is that correct? Or is it a bit of both for trying to figure out, making sure that that reliability is there in place? It's absolutely both. I head of a two headed monster.

I have a lot of little load and a small amount of huge load, right? So there are two different factors to be dealt with. We've done something at PSE &G that is super innovative, done by very few, if any other utilities. Most residential people can put in a charger without notifying their utility company, even though there's probably a rule that they're supposed to. But if they have ample panel space, their electrician will come in and put it in for them.

So we have what we believe, what I've nicknamed ghost chargers, we believe we have 50 to 80,000 ghost chargers in our territory just based on vehicle registration data. So we're in the process of trying to find those. But the program that we have, which helps you pay for that electrician's installation costs, 20,000 customers have come in to get our make ready incentive for residential charger, every single one of those has been put through an engineering evaluation. That's very rare.

But we put them through an engineering evaluation to ensure that we don't have a brownout problem on a week like this week has been. That we will have adequate service in the heat of the summer. And so um we've been investing in our last mile upgrades in order to handle that load. Now those 20,000 residential chargers represent an additional 200 megawatts um of load request on our territory.

And again, most other utilities, they're not, you know, they're looking at it, but they're not as actively putting it through engineering eval as we are. That's an interesting call out. Can you kind of share why it was the addition of engineering? that partially due to safety? Is it also just to kind of help give PSCMG like the visibility of how many chargers are going in and how, or like to what scale? It's just kind of an interesting thing.

I'm actually dealing with that at my own house, uh having to upgrade our panel for completely different reasons. But of course, part of that is going to be adding a charger as well. So I'm just kind of curious as to what, if you can share maybe a little of what played into that decision and kind of the logic in that. Yeah, it's a combination of reasons. um First and foremost, we're regulated by the Board of Public Utilities. That's New Jersey's utility commission.

The Board of Public Utilities um set forth where we had a make ready program that we can offer to help customers with costs on both sides of the meter. So the utility side make ready, poles, wires, transformers, customer side make ready, which could be switch gear, conduits, trenching, parking rehab, right? All of that up to the charger stub. So because we were given that, we had some funding we could put towards that last mile upgrades with respect to additional EV load.

Moreover, uh the tried and true engineers whose job it is for reliability were very concerned about all of this load getting added um and not done in the appropriate engineering fashion. um Meanwhile, we had a new vice president of customer experience who came in and helped us create what we call an Express Connect process. So this engineering evaluation is done in an average of five days or less.

Now, the entire process takes two to three months, but the engineering about came down from a 27 day thing to a five day thing, because we predominantly do a desktop eval now and only go out to the site if it's absolutely unclear um in the desktop eval. So with that combination of things and bottom line, public service, electric and gas very much values the reliability that they provide.

We have won the reliability award for the Mid-Atlantic Large Utilities 22 years, maybe 23 years in a row, I believe. It's very valuable to us to know that we give reliable service.

as I was trying to build this startup to put in... you know it's going to be forty thousand residential charges before we're done uh... there was a lot of concern about the grade and the reliability so this was the compromise in the i'm really honestly the process was that you know stellarly put together was a brainstorm that brought together all different groups to come up with this

Yeah, no, I think that's great. It's great to hear kind of that ongoing kind of finding ways to improve upon to really kind of make it to speed up the process and make it just even a better experience for those who apply. Can you share what um the actual incentive is for PSEMG uh users to kind of go through that process to get an incentive for putting an EV charger in? Yes, so we have three programs in our Clean Energy Future Electric Vehicle Program. We have three programs.

For the residential program, we can offer you up to $1,500 rebate for the cost of the electrician to install a Level 2 charger. Now you're responsible for deciding if you want a NEMA 1450 outlet, you know, the 220 volt outlet in your house like your dryer gets connected to. or if you want it wall installed, direct wired inside your house, outside. You make all of those decisions.

You hire your electrician and then you pay your electrician's invoice and we then can rebate you up to $1,500 for that cost. addition, yeah, right. Direct, direct rebate. In addition, if there is a service upgrade needed, if you need a larger service wire or a pole transformer, et cetera, et cetera, we can fund up to $5,000 of that. cost. um That's only needed. We thought 10 % is averaging really 12 % of the cases, right?

But for the most part, our customers don't end up paying a penny um if that upgrade is needed. oh I think I have 12 cases out of 20,000 that that was not true. um So it's really lucrative helping you put a level two charger in your home. We also have mixed use commercial program. We call it MXU, right? Mixed use commercial. That's geared towards multi-unit dwellings, uh commercial entities, and government entities. And that is to help put level two chargers in.

They can get a combination of rebates that adds up to $40,000. um $30,000 is on the customer side, installing, trenching the wires, the conduit, all of that, parking repair, permits, things like that. And then $10,000 is on the utility side for the make ready. um We also have a DC direct current fast charging program and those sites can get up to $150,000 rebate. And we're pretty excited.

We have helped install over 500 DC fast chargers in our territory since this program started in January of 2021. We're almost at almost a 5,000 mixed use commercial chargers. And like I said, over 21,000 residential chargers. That's great. I'm kind of curious. That's awesome to hear for people who are part of the service territory. And so I guess to kind of bring it maybe internally, uh obviously, the incentives aren't there for doing the installation, but it's really interesting.

You had mentioned a lot of your fleet has gone electric. Is there any of that you can kind of share of the internal and kind of whether that be kind of cost and other benefits that have been for PSE and G. by switching more of their vehicles to electric.

You know, um we're committed to helping the state with its clean energy goals and we wanted to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. So we made a commitment publicly through EI Edison, you know, Electric Institute, which we're a member of that we would convert all of our passenger vehicles, 60 % of our medium and 90 % of our heavy duty vehicles by 2030. But with the heavy duty, the commitment was to anti-idle work systems, not the drive train. So just so you're aware of the distinction.

uh But as part of that, we have been, you know, we want to do it in a very cost prudent matter because let's face it, our costs are borne by your electric rates, right? So we always look at cost prudency. So we basically predominantly are doing life cycle changes of our vehicles. So if it's time to replace X percent of our vehicles this year, we're looking to do that in electric fashion. The passenger vehicles have been great. that hasn't been any trouble, they're available, they meet our needs.

We are doing okay with some vans, we're doing okay with some box trucks. There really is not yet those heavy duty vehicles that are available. So like I said, those are going more towards anti-idle work systems so that the vehicle can operate without idling. But we've gotten some great data. that makes a lot of sense because that, I mean, there's a huge benefit to just, I don't think maybe people listening appreciate how often those kind of vehicles are right.

And the effect that those have, and you're right, unfortunately there isn't a whole lot of options in the heavy duty side, or at least just yet, but I'm sorry, it sounds like you're gonna say a little bit more. oh I apologize, it's been great because we did ask for volunteers, so these people that have been driving these vehicles are EV enthusiasts or EV nerds as you like to call them.

um They've been great, they've been real ambassadors and given us real world data because if they are having an issue, it's because they are having an issue and then we can address it and deal with No, that's great. I guess one of the things that we're kind of curious about is, I think you alluded to a little bit earlier. Obviously I kind of want to talk more about some of the maybe future forward looking things like V2G and some of these other technologies.

But right now, one of the things is kind of like time of use. And I believe that PSE &G does have a program for that.

I think you alluded to a little bit, but can you share a bit more about that and if there's any kind of data that your team is seeing about the positive impacts that that combined with electrification are having for your service territory? Yeah, so right now that board approved program has an off peak charging credit for residential customers and a demand charge rebate for the DCFC sites.

So for the DCFC sites, it's been great because when a site first builds and maybe it's not as known and popular and doesn't have a high utilization, it's paying an effective rate that's a little bit higher because of those demand charges. So we were able to offer the customers a 75 % rebate on their demand charges for two years. And then a 50 % rebate has been ongoing since year three of our program and will continue as long as our program continues.

So that has helped put those 500 DCFC chargers in because those companies are a for-profit business. have to, they can't operate at a loss for long, right? So it's been able to bridge the gap of getting in a new site and letting it get known and popular and used, right? So. It helped break that Catch-22, it's like a vicious Catch-22 where you don't want to build a charger if there aren't cars, people aren't buying cars if there aren't chargers, right? So that's been very helpful.

For the residential program, I have a very complicated off-peak charging credit. I wish it was simpler. It's not because it's meant to uh follow time of use rate practices, right? So we emulate that off-line. um but customers can get up to 10 and a half cents off per kilowatt hour if they charge completely off peak. It's in essence, their off peak charging minus their on peak charging times a rebate. It's not exactly how it works, but we're trying to say, really go off peak.

100 % off peak gets you the most rebate. We went from 80 % off peak charging to 91 % off peak charging when we started this off peak program. So it's clearly... induce the right charging behavior. we're very excited about it. This program will be sunsetting because with all of this information that we've gotten since 2021, we designed a new time of use with a three period rate that we're working to get rolled out starting in September.

But that is designed to also promote off-peak, not only off-peak charging, but off-peak use of any other equipment like your dryer or your dishwasher or whatnot. And you can save a significant amount of money in that. is because of the data we got through the off-peak charging credit. That's great to hear. I guess you've kind of mentioned DCFC and you mentioned the residential. Are there any additional things, I guess, for like the commercial side or kind of look?

mean, obviously, traditionally, they have much more of the radio. They're used to the kind of time of use and demand charges and that. But I'm just curious if there's any other things on that side around electrification you're able to share that make we haven't covered yet.

Yeah, so, you know, when I started negotiating this uh program again, I was so new to EV and the two parts that I think are missing and I wish I could go back and have a way back time machine and do over again. One of them is rate relief for commercial customers, right? Level two commercial customers that didn't end up in this program. The other one is a workplace charging program. Didn't end up in my program and the other utilities in the state have that.

But with respect to the commercial customers, if they're level two chargers, which is what our program is providing, typically they're on, it's our GLP tariff, General Lighting and Power Tariff. So it doesn't have a strong component that swings on peak off peak. So the impact isn't as strong as it is for those DCFC customers that are on our larger tariffs, higher rated tariffs.

um We're in the process of trying to negotiate the next program and those two items that are missing are on my to-do list. So we'll give it a try. Yeah, I totally understand. I appreciate the transparency. guess, you know, we do have some people that listen that are in the utility space.

Are you able to kind of just share what given kind of that hindsight 2020, you share what you would ideally like a commercial program to look like from the perspective of the utility or just maybe go a little bit more in depth of like, what that ideally would look like.

Yes, so there are some requirements that the Board of Public Utilities, know, when we negotiated our filing, we go through that and the rate payer advocate who's very acutely aware of any increase in the electric rates and what impact that will have on the rate payers. So it's always a balance of what you can do, how big you can do it, how do you keep the cost prudent. ah For me, our DCFC requirements are that they be available 24-7.

And I have some territories that aren't really, it's not really wise to open up 24 seven. They're subject to vandalism and, maybe, you crime and things like that. And so I like some relief on a case by case basis, even if possible on that requirement, um, because that does impact customers, you know, might have a circle K in a zip code in a neighborhood that shouldn't be open 24 seven, you know, um, as an example, and they can't participate in this program. because that's a requirement.

Another requirement is that the commercial customers, unless they're a government entity or multi-unit dwelling, so any regular commercial dentist office, as an example, has to make that available to the public 24-7 as well, and that's not always feasible or, you know, it's a little bit limiting. So I'd like the ability to have some relief on those two criteria. That's actually really interesting.

I can definitely, that's an odd balance because I can definitely say from my own personal experience, I definitely charged up places where I was like, why is this open? And at least some of that was maybe I was on a road trip and it was kind of late at night anyway. Um, but it is that that's an interesting way. Cause once people know that there is one, they kind of expect it to be there.

I guess, is there anything you've kind of thought about as far as like how you message that or how that would be? From kind of the side of the driver, I mean, I don't know, maybe you just reflect that it is more like business hours, but if someone kind of rolls up at like 10 or 1 p.m. because they're used to charging there and then they're kind of surprised. And admittedly, this is kind of like a one off use case, but just just kind of curious.

Yeah, I think the apps that are out there right now are very, very robust. um You know, I don't want to give a plug, but I'm going to say plug shares my favorite app, right? So personally, um and it tells you if it's open or not. tells you if there's, you know, there's eight ones, but only two are available. Like you, so you know that you're going to pull up and share the power. Once you're an electric vehicle driver, if you're an EV nerd, you know all this stuff, right?

I think that that case that you just said, if it's a place you're used to going to, well, if you're used to going to, you know, it closes at 10. ah It's kind of like your gas station or your liquor store, you know, when they open and close, right? So uh you'll factor that into your use pattern. I, uh, I agree with it.

I will just give a little bit of pushback and this, is nothing like I totally well intentioned and just inventing personal experience I've had recently where, um, I agree with you plug share and a couple of the new apps are really great.

I've just seen anecdotally recently a lot of like first time and like, once again, it's, think one of things I have to kind of remind and talk to a lot of the people that even listen to this, the EV nerds where it's like, well, there's a lot of people who are new to this. They're kind of coming in. And they have kind of run into these issues. mean, I was at a supercharger a couple of weeks ago and this guy in a Rivian was really nice, but he just couldn't figure out why it was working.

And I kind of had it, I was like, well, this is an older one and technically only works with Tesla's. It actually doesn't work with Rivians. He was nice about it, but he had no idea. And so it's just like these kind of weird, and obviously this is a growing pain thing and there may not be a perfect uh solution for all of these, but it is just one of those things where. The 24-7 requirement is like, it's a hard one to figure out because I think it's such a good intention thing.

But you're totally right that there's also these experiences that just are subpar as to describe it. Yeah, this is probably a place that just shouldn't be open all those times. I have two thoughts on that. One is the rest stops on your highways. They've got security lighting, all of that. So they are 24-7, so you can always go there even if you need to charge at 2 in the morning. And they're meant for driving through the state, right? Long-term driving anyway.

The other one is anything new has its hiccups, right? Getting something new. My analogy for going into an EV, even though I was an adult, is when I learned to drive. Because before I got my permit at 16, I didn't think anything about my parents gas tank gauge or whether there was windshield wiper fluid in the bottle or whether I had a snow scraper in the car when I needed it. I didn't think of that. And I was 16. I should have maybe been thinking of that, but I wasn't.

Once you start driving, these are all things you learn. Sometimes the hard way you might run out of gas, you might not have a scraper. And I feel like transitioning to an EV is somewhat like that. So, um but most for the most part after two or three months, people are in love with their EV and they understand where and how to charge it. you know, I think there's that's just a growing pain sort of to go that way. No, for sure. And I can appreciate the candor just being open about it.

It's just, I think inherently you can only solve for so many problems and there is kind of a net benefit of just getting the stuff in the ground a lot of the time. One other thing I want to ask you about is kind of how you kind of mentioned there's now a new phase of this that you're kind of working through to get into it. I know, I believe,

It was this existing phase where you kind of had the goal to energize over, believe, 45,000 EV charters and kind of like adding roughly like 700 each month was kind of the goal. Can you just explain maybe some of the challenges your team faced in scaling up the infrastructure and maybe how they're being addressed if we haven't covered that yet?

And then if there's anything like, once again, count the examples of hindsight 2020 that just looking at it like, okay, this is just one of those things that we kind of need to tweak for this reason to. Make sure just moving forward, even works even better. Sure, mean, who knew I would be registering 700 customers a day? I, in hindsight, didn't sit down and do the math and say 40,000 divided by how many years divided by 12 years, months in a year. I didn't realize that.

you know, getting that pipeline, doing the marketing and education and outreach to get that pipeline. Again, like based on the registered data, we have so many customers that maybe aren't aware and just aren't coming and getting that 1500, but they're definitely going to, you know, electric.

So that has been, had to learn about marketing and customer education that I didn't know. um Dealing with the data. So our board order requires that the customer submit their charging data. um And along the way, we started to work with vehicle telematics companies so that we could get more than just charger data. We could get Teslas to join because the Tesla, until gen three, the Tesla charger wasn't a smart charger, which was a requirement for our program.

um So now we are collecting vehicle telematics and we have a lot of Tesla customers taking advantage of that off-peak Because when we started, you the data was, you can't even use AMI data, even though we didn't have AMI when I first started this program, but we were going to be putting it in. But it's behind the whole house, so you can't distinguish whether you're using your dryer, you know, whatever. It's a muddied piece of data and I understood that. I'm an engineer.

I came in and I said, that makes sense. I get that. So let's start getting the charging data and then let's start getting the vehicle telematics data. Well, it's so nascent that its data quality is worse than if I had taken the muddied AMI data. I didn't know that going in. That's a hard lesson learned after the fact. So we have done an awful lot of effort, work, IT infrastructure building, license fees, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears for my poor team because the data quality is...

It's just not there yet. And if we talk with the EVSE companies or even the vehicle telematics companies, it's not their primary concern. So why do you need that high level quality data? We need that meter revenue quality. Like, unfortunately, that's a requirement for us, which is why that off-peak credit was offline um and why anything that isn't offline, you know, any time of use rate is going to have to be whole house. Right.

So, um so those are things that As I'm negotiating the next program, we're trying to say, listen, let's go ahead and use the AMI data instead of getting all of this other data that costs so much, is so difficult to get, and isn't any more accurate. So whether or not I'm successful with that, I don't know. And now that's interesting. I'm kind curious. This might be a little different wheelhouse to what you work in your realm.

But I'm kind of curious if PSE and GE is kind of like looking at the smart panel space. Obviously, that's kind of a larger view of all the energy usage in a home. But it seems kind of correlated that can kind of help with kind of filling in those gaps and help maybe answer some of those questions for you today.

Absolutely. So I work in the Clean Energy Solutions Group and we have three programs, this little tiny EV program, a very nice Clean Energy jobs program, and then any humongous, very robust energy efficiency program. So I joke, I'm the little tiny redheaded stepchild sometimes. ah So that's energy efficiency. offer dozens of products to customers, whether residential or commercial. We have smart thermostats.

We are offering now, starting just this month, a demand response uh program where if you're willing to work with your smart thermostat on a week like this, you can get uh some incentives for that. um You can get your home weatherization assessment for free. You can then get information on what it would cost to do whatever they recommend and how you can pay that on your bill over time.

all sorts of things. There's uh comfort partners, which we help low income families, you know, make sure their homes are more comfortable. um Our goal, we have a vision at public service. Our vision is where customers use less energy and that it's delivered uh safe, reliable and clean. Yeah, that's great. And I think that makes a lot of sense because that seems to be kind of a universal thing.

think that the law utilities, the electric vehicle components, probably the newest thing, but it does kind of fit into all these existing programs, especially around energy efficiency. I guess kind of talking about that topic, are there ways looking at to kind of look at beyond just a single home, but leveraging and this I think kind of gets into our vehicle to grid kind of conversation. But how do. more efficiently operate the grid as a whole.

And then by seeing kind of what EV charging patterns are in usage, and then maybe what the next future step is, is like how realistic or how soon it is to kind of get that vehicle to load component involved in all of this. Cause it still seems very early days for that part of it, but it seems like as kind of the larger part of the total grid view, there's a lot of opportunities, especially kind of going to like wave timeout around the brownouts or any like just being more proactive.

with just all these vehicles coming onto the grid. Yeah, one of the biggest things about vehicle charging is it really is for the most part something that you can manage around time. Maybe not if you have a really large duty cycle and your bus is running 24-7.

But for the most part, there is the capability of doing managed charging and peak shaving is a benefit not only to the individual customer because their rates were lower and they're paying less for an entire year following that, but it's a benefit

to downward pressure for all customers and it's a benefit to us that we don't need to build to that really high peak. You know, we can build to a more reasonable peak. So peak shaving happens in so many ways. One of course is the software. You know, any sort of fleet needs to have that right software, not needs, they should want the software to manage their charging again because it saves them money in the long run um and it lowers what we have to do to build the grid.

um So that's just the software. Then of course, know, energy storage is a huge capability of peak shaving, whether you have solar on your facility and whether you use that bi-directional battery, if it's bi-directional, it's either to vehicle the building for now or just um peak shaving. Ultimately vehicle the grid would be great. We're still in a regulatory hold pattern on that. However, we are partnering with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

on some grant projects that are called Eco Hub sites and there five school districts that are going to put in storage, solar and vehicle charging. um we're going to sort of pilot a vehicle to grid. It's not actually a vehicle to grid, but we're going to pilot it to get the data so that we can get some information that can help us move forward and help the BPU move forward, give them the information they need to approve that going forward.

We're also in our medium heavy duty filing, we submitted in February and we're currently in discovery on. We proposed uh technical trials to include storage and a vehicle. We said vehicle to anything V to X. We will probably, it's not heavily funded, so we probably do vehicle to building. But never say never, I don't know for sure yet.

Well, and I think that's a great call out that does kind of highlight in a lot of ways how this is still early days for this program because we can't even always agree on what the correct term is for the use case, whether it's vehicle to grid, vehicle to load, vehicle to X, vehicle to building. uh But I think there's clearly a good insight and where there's kind of a good place to get to. I'm curious around the actual product bit and availability.

um I think a lot of, especially on kind of like utility and also like city to county size, there have been a lot of like electric uh bus, especially like electric school bus and grid backup because you can use them in the summer or to browse. Like that use case makes a lot of sense to me, but that is kind of like one specific use case. I'm kind of curious if there's any examples that your team's thinking about or interested in that either seems I guess there's a lot of questions.

First, um what are you finding issues with actually finding the right products? Like there are only a few electric vehicles, even in the light duty space that actually offers vehicle to create technology and then you have to have the right charger with it. So I'm just kind of curious like how that impacts what your team actually wants to do with these pilots and then what that kind of future state looks like or what you want to work towards.

Yeah, so because the state, the BPU has oh mandated a public-private partnership in electrification, we stop at the charger stub. So we're not involved in any chargers and any vehicles. However, my entire team are the innovative type of people. That's why they came to work on something innovative. So we try to stay as abreast as possible because we can help inform customers, plus we learn more and it's just all good.

um So, I'm familiar with what there is and isn't out there and I um think, I hate to say it's a couple years out anyway until it's normal. So, I think what's out there is perfect for baby steps and pilot studies and technical trials and you know, the more we can get those funded, the better because they cost money but right now there is some limitations to some of the grant funding that used to be available, right? So, um we're all navigating that. as well.

Do you find also from a, I feel like also a big part of the vehicle to grid conversation is obviously it make a vehicle to grid, especially, but if you're doing like vehicle to building, it's a pretty clear, like, okay, here's the battery and these cars and it's going into this building. Once you start getting to the grid or a larger entity, it can, seems like there's such a large ineffective data component needed. Do you feel like that that's still a big part of it?

Is that kind of why you guys are starting with the building in this example first? And I guess I'm kind of curious as someone who's like actually doing some of this, what are the things you would like to see either from a data provider or really the market as far as the products needed to fill kind of these gaps to make it more feasible for more projects? Yeah, think, you know, ours is a regulatory holdup, right? We have for 2022 isn't coming out for up for forever.

And and so that that just limits what we can and can't do regardless. But I would love to see, you know, listen, I would personally love to put on my own home some solar and a wall battery and a bidirectional charger. And so if I think just personally. And then if I say to myself, you tell one friend and they tell two friends and so on and so on, right? I think it would be ideal for all of us. you know, I don't want to get political, but weather events are what they are.

you know, um I think any kind of resiliency we can have at every individual's level is, I think that's great. And I think it also helps long-term with the grid stability and long-term with grid development. um We have these data centers that want a lot of power and so anything we can do to keep everybody's grid the size it needs to be, that would be great I think.

I guess that lends to kind of like, are there any things your team's kind of doing around micro grids or kind of trying to help with that resiliency? I realized that also kind of plays in the vehicle, the great vehicle picks kind of component of it, but I'm curious ah if that's kind of come up in conversations of how your team is looking to kind of leverage that and do more with ah trying to increase that reliability or.

If it's not microgrids, maybe what are some of the technologies that your team is really focused on? Or is finding along this kind of path to electrification to help with reliability?

Yeah, so we've had a couple of projects, a couple of different clients that have done microgrid work and we are excited and supportive and working with innovative internal contacts to make those happen. Like I said, these five eco hubs, they'll be basically microgrids. So we're in the process literally of just the first site visits for those.

And um we have collaborated with, we have one school system, inner city school system that um Their school is also the cooling center and the warming center during storms. So they put in the bi-directional technology. We haven't had to use it yet. um So I don't have any data on that, but we're happy to collaborate with customers that do that. I think what's happening right now is it's cost prohibitive in a lot of ways. um It's an initial investment.

Now, to begin with, the vehicles are still more costly, right? especially if you're talking about buses and trucks, um then the chargers that are bidirectional are more costly. And then you might need panel changes and system changes in your switching station and things like that. to get into it is more costly. right now I'm thinking that unless there are more grants coming, they're going to be fewer. m and limited right now.

But anything that anybody wants to do innovative, we're happy to participate with. First off, we're always going to give someone power. If someone asks for the power, we're going to give it to them. That's our mandate, right? But if they're doing something innovative, then we want to also work together with them, learn while they learn, and help us go forward with future programs.

I know I didn't really answer you, but that's kind of... I realized it's kind of a big question as it is, but I guess it kind of is kind of talking about the longer term projects. mean, we are kind of dealing with the early days of the vehicle to grid. We're kind of going through like, I don't know if you want to call it phase two or phase three of EVs on the grid and kind of moving from more of a reactive to now more and more proactive with that kind of integration.

ah I'd be curious to just kind learn more about your long-term, your team's long-term plans for integrating EVs into the grid and just maybe how you envision the role of utilities evolving as more and more transportation electrifies, whether it be V2G or not, obviously.

Yes, so the big thing is with now looking to incentivize people to do medium heavy duty vehicles, trucks, buses and fleets, this is a higher load, right? So we're going from, uh maybe it was an 18 kilowatt charger, used to be a seven, then it was an 11, now it's like an 18 kilowatt charger. We're going to one, two, three megawatts, maybe even more, that the collective charging power load is for these truck centers or for fleet locations. That is a distinctly different team, right?

So our distribution engineers are over here. Now we're looking at asset strategy team and a much higher load level at a much longer term evaluation for that. I'm not going to get that in five days. I'm going to tell you that right now. It's not going to happen, right? It's more like that many months probably, to be fair and honest. So there's that going on with the high power needs.

There is also you know we want to do this program we really are excited about it but um... again i've got to get through the systems where a lot of times the customers aren't even and they don't own the property at the prospecting so to do an engineering evaluation on a property you don't know those are those are things that are held up uh... but our future plans are that you know we are norc airport port norc port elizabeth the term pike, right?

We are really anxious and excited to help customers convert those trucks to zero emission. To be honest, we're fuel agnostic, but I work in the electric company, so I'm helping with the electrification, right? em But um it's really important. know, the emissions really do impact students' health on electric, you know, on school buses. um We have lot of particulate matter and high, you know, asthma and poor air quality rates in those, you know, right in that Newark, Kearney, Elizabeth area.

And I think it's 8,000 trucks a day go in and out of Port Norwick and Port Elizabeth. So um we're committed to helping. We really want to do what we can to help our customers electrify. That barrier of that initial cost to get into it is huge. So we'd like to help with that. We're negotiating right now, as I said, with the BPU and with the rate payer advocate to try and bring a program. Now, that program is very small.

because there is such a cost concern right now and affordability is of such high focus. So it's a small program, but it's a toe in the water. It's uh step in the right direction. It's gonna get us information to inform what we should do going forward. So it's an iterative step and I'm just happy to be able to take, I'm looking forward to being able to take that first step. No, that's great.

I think actually there's a couple of things you mentioned into that that I don't think get enough attention or discussion around electrification. Because I mean, say what you will think what you will about global warming, climate change. There's good data for that. But I understand it can be really hard to kind of get bought into something that's so large.

But what you talked about right there with not only electric school buses for children, I'd to be pretty clear in that those kinds of emissions can have. I think the big thing that just doesn't get enough attention is the fact that brake dust is so incredibly toxic and bad. And you can really easily tie that to areas of where it can be like people live near highways, like asthma rates and all these other things can be pretty highly and pretty easily tied to certain things like that.

And that's where like lot of education, you get root-grain breaking, you don't have that, or pretty drastically reduce it. I think a really great kind of call out.

And I think that the things that have been missing from a lot of these conversations, especially when you're talking about like a utility, not in your case, but like a lot of these conversations where they lead with like a climate change conversation, which sure, but I don't think it's people buying in, but if you can say, hey, there's a bunch of them going from like, in like your time

about the Porsche authority or the, you talk to a pretty clear local impact to people and the buy-in, I feel like if there's a 180 and people are like, oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense. We should do that. On top of that is the noise pollution. You don't even realize that highway noise, if we cut that in half, wow. I can remember back to 9-11, and I live in area, I hear planes all the time, don't notice them. What we noticed after 9-11 was the absence of the airplane noise.

It was remarkable to notice it. So I'd love to do that with the traffic. Imagine if the turnpike didn't sound like the current sounds that you hear on the turnpike. No, I am about 10,000 % with you on that one. ah Fortunately, it's only a few times a day, but where we live, there are very loud logging trucks when they come down the road. And I've got problems logging. It's something that has to happen. And it provides a lot of good resources.

But if we could get the logging trucks electric, all the better, just because of how damn loud those things are going through here. once again, it's pretty clear. I'll be at my yard and you can hear it, not only hear it, but you can smell like the actual particulate come out of it. So it's these kind of kind of local and clear pilot cases and kind of impacts that can, you can tie it to something and scale it to a much larger resource.

But kind of given that we're talking about kind of these local aspects for each of our areas and communities and how electrification plays into that. Are there any things that you can share for those who might be listening, who are parts of utilities? uh Any feedback or advice you have of how to make implementing, whether it be electrification or just pilots in general, or trying to get buy-in to make these kinds of changes that would help those listening to be more effective in their own roles.

Yeah, I, I, when I speak in public about connecting to the utility for electrification projects, I have a little sound bite that says, please contact your utility early and often. Um, a lot of times people don't think about it until too late. Um, but the problem is I've changed that sound bite a little bit contact us early and often, but find the team, find the electric vehicle team or the utility of the future team or the grid modernization team.

I'm not sure what they call it, but they call it something like that. because if you just contact your utility and say, I'm thinking of putting in truck chargers two years from now, they're going to say, come back later. But no, need, utilities need to be at the table earlier. So another thing that's in that medium heavy duty program that we've proposed is technical and planning services. So we want to be our customers trusted utility advisor. We want to be their partner.

um So we can help if we get this program approved, we can help with their electrification journey from the beginning. um One of the things, don't over-size your chargers. Dawn't think you need one fast charger for every truck, unless you really do. Look at your duty cycle. Look at whether you can share dual-port chargers. Look at level 2s and up. You're to pay a lower rate. You're going to pay a lower installation cost, all of that. um And it's better for the grid in the long run.

um So to be able to offer those upfront planning services, which is way... upstream of what the utility normally provides. um I think those are vital and exciting and would help not only the customers but the utilities with the planning. So my advice to utilities is to try and find a way to provide that upfront, provide that earlier service, whatever that team may be, um rather than show me the load letter.

I used to say if I had a nickel for every time internally I heard, me the load letter, which is your new business application or your service upload application, everybody calls it something different, it's effectively known as the load letter. um There's a lot of planning for electrification of a fleet before then. Do you want to do 10 % now? Do you want to do life cycle replacement? Do you want to build for now or build for future? You know, it's cheaper to build once rather than three times.

However, it's such and impact on your rates. you got to sit down and think that all through and design all that. And if you're really just in the business of moving people in a bus or transporting goods in a fleet of trucks, you know, that's a completely new um analysis that you need. I don't I really appreciate you sharing all of those tips. Those are really impactful and really great. And I realized we're kind of coming up on the end of our time here.

I think what brothers I was so excited to have you on is just like what you've been able to do so far and some of these projects that you've already done out. got this next phase of like launching new versions of these programs. But one of the things you had mentioned recently before we went live was the recent Edison truck and kind of just being like to that heavy duty kind of like ribbon cutting and some of that stuff. Can you share like some of these? I think it's always helpful.

It's always easy to kind of like think about what's happened and where you're going, but like share this and like some of these other wins. it kind of helps give maybe some wind in the sails to others who are listening to show that these things are kind of having big impacts in there. Could they have big impacts in their own service community like they are for yours?

Yeah, we're really excited. um EV NSC is a company in Kearney, New Jersey that just had a ribbon cutting ceremony yesterday for a truck charging hub. We are the power in it. know, they did most of it. just we put the E in EV, right? But we were excited to be a partner with them and for them to even give us the credit of a quote in their press release. And we were there at the ribbon cutting, celebrating this really great location. It's so near the port.

um And, you know, trucks can come in and charge. We have The Port Authority put in a large truck charging hub, which we were supposed to have a ribbon cutting, but it got postponed due to the weather. So we will have one coming up. But that's another great facility right on the port where trucks can charge. We have another client that is putting in a huge truck, trucking as a service facility in Newark. And we're working on that now. It's early on and they've made a public announcement.

So that's fine. But um We're just excited for these hubs. One of the other big things is the DEP, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, got a huge grant, $350 million grant, to put truck charging hubs. It's not just New Jersey, right? New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. And last October, was Halloween, we had a ribbon cutting um at the um truck stop on the Turnpike. had one... the week before Vince Lombardi and then that one was at the Thomas Edison truck stop.

um that's exciting because that's a collaboration between the DEP, the BPU, the utilities, we're the utility involved on the Turnpike for the most part and then Atlantic City Electric down in the south. um And I just think that's an amazing effort where, you know, we're collaborating where maybe historically these were more antagonistic relationships.

Instead we're at the table together, monthly coordination meetings, and everybody's putting together the energy to create and get these truck stops. So, very excited about these couple that we've just cut the ribbon on and more are coming. No, that's great. And I think, that's such a great place to probably end it for today with those accomplishments. We'll have to have you and the CNG team on again soon to kind of share the updates and further see how the things you're working on evolve.

But thank you so much for coming on today, Dom. Well, thank you for having me and I welcome the chance to come back.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of Grid connections. We hope Dawn Neville's insights into PSE and G's EV program gave you a deeper look at how utilities are stepping up to support the clean transportation transition from infrastructure planning to equity focused deployment. you found this episode valuable, please share with someone who cares about the future mobility and energy as well. Your support helps us reach more listeners and grow the conversation.

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