Optimizing EV Charging for a Smarter Grid: How WeaveGrid Connects Drivers, Utilities, and Clean Energy with Kendall Cody

Good morning, Grid Connections listeners. Welcome back to Grid Connections, the podcast where we explore the intersection of clean energy, electric vehicles, and the evolving power grid. I'm your host Chase. And today I'm thrilled to share a conversation with Kendall Cody, Director of Marketing and Communications at WeaveGrid, a company helping EVs become a flexible grid optimized resource through intelligent software integration with utilities.

If that name sounds familiar, it's actually not the first time we've had someone from WeaveGrid on the show. but it's really interesting to hear how far they've come since we last spoke with them and some of the new updates they have to share.

In this episode, we unpack how WeaveGrid is working behind the scenes to help utilities prepare for the electric vehicle boom, the importance of customer engagement in managed charging programs, why trust and transparency matter for successful grid partnerships, and what it takes to scale utility collaboration in a fragmented market. Before we get into today's episode, just want to remind you though about the launch of grid connections consulting.

We're helping organizations from utilities to startups navigate the electric vehicle electrification landscape. Learn more at grid connections.co. You can also find the link in today's show notes. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with someone who's passionate about the future of energy and mobility. And don't forget to leave a puzzle review on your favorite podcast app. It really does help us grow. Plus don't miss a beat in the industry.

Sign up for our newsletter, use the link in the show notes to get the latest episodes, EV news and consulting insights delivered straight to your inbox with that. Enjoy.

Kendall, thank you so much for coming on today. I know we've got quite a few different topics we're going to cover, but really excited to be getting into this, with you today and. learning more about what Weave Grid's working on. Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

for those who may not be familiar with what you do at WeaveGrid and then what WeaveGrid does in general, can you just kind of give like an overview of the company just for any listeners who may have missed the previous episodes with the WeaveGrid team. Yeah, of course. So I like to describe WeaveGrid as an EVMS or an electric vehicle management system.

We're a software company, so we don't create any electric vehicle charging hardware products, but we work with electric utilities, EV automakers, and then those charger manufacturers to optimize when EVs are charging on the electric grid, which will ultimately help enable, you know, EV adoption.

More specifically, what we do is we shift when EVs are charging to ensure that that charging is happening at times that are both best for the driver, so cheapest, or utilizing renewable energy if the cleanliness is something that they care about, or times that are best for the resilience of the electric grid. So, you know, times when there's not a lot of other electricity demand and it's easier for the utility to serve those EV customers.

As for me, I've been with Weave Grid for about three and a half years now. I lead our marketing and communications efforts. And what that means is everything from announcing new fundraising and partnerships and utility programs to managing our event presence and booth set conferences and what our website looks like and our brand identity and all of those things. So how we really appear publicly as a company.

can you describe how WeaveGrid it's like driver. program specifically like benefits, both EV owners and also the electrical grid. I think that's where there's a really interesting kind of crossover with your team's offerings. Yeah, absolutely. So we really strive to always put the EV driver first.

Obviously, we're trying to optimize for the grid at the end of the day, but we want EV drivers to have the best possible experience with their at-home charging because they're going through a transition themselves, right? They're switching from filling up every time that their gas tank near is empty to kind of charging more consistently at home, usually overnight.

So the structure of each of our programs actually varies a little bit by utility and that just is in terms of, you know, whether there's an upfront incentive or what the goal of the actual program is. In some cases, it's very explicitly to use renewable energy for charging. For example, our Xcel Energy Charging Perks program in Colorado. is using EV charging to absorb excess renewables like wind or energy that would otherwise be curtailed. So that's awesome.

That's like 100 % charging on clean electricity at times that are cheaper for the driver. But kind of across the board, all of these programs offer some sort of sign up incentive. And so it's free for the customer. They're even essentially being paid to join these programs. And then they receive some sort of compensation for staying engaged in the program, either after six months, after a year, or even ongoing monthly in some cases.

On top of that, we're helping them charge at the times that are cheapest for them based on their electric rate. So if drivers are on a time of use rate where electricity is cheaper at certain times of day when demand is lower for the utility, then we'll ensure that they're always charging during those cheapest times.

So it's really kind of a aiming to be a set it and forget it style experience where you kind of just get used to coming home, plugging in when you get home, not worrying too much about it and knowing that your car will charge at the cheapest time for you. I'm in this world, right? I'm thinking about this kind of stuff all the time, but I've literally written, you know, my peak power hours on my fridge because I keep forgetting when it's cheapest to, you know, run my dishwasher, run my laundry.

But with my car, I know I can just plug it in and it'll charge at the time that's cheapest because WeaveGrid is taking care of it in the background. And I am enrolled in a WeaveGrid program, so it's fun to get to be a user of the product as well. And then on the grid side, it's kind of like I said through that renewable program or even like the time of use rates, the electric utilities have built the grid planning for homes to pop up.

where they are, to be built where they are, but not necessarily to like double the load of those homes by plugging a car in there as well. And so a lot of the challenges that utilities face are actually at that more local distribution level. And that's something that's not always captured by those time of use rates, which is actually more thinking about the electricity generation or bulk power level. And so what we'll do is take in more granular data from the utility.

and ensure that the cars are charging at times that are better for that local system so that they don't have to, you know, build more infrastructure to deliver power to homes and that they can kind of prolong the assets they have, which will over time actually keep electric rates lower for customers as well. So it's really multifaceted. gets a little bit convoluted.

But the idea is that we're kind of taking away the complexity from everyday people and even from the utilities to some degree and kind of just helping all of this stuff operate smoother in the background.

Yeah, that's great. And I think, I mean, one of the things I want to ask you about was like, how does this kind of integrate and utilities involved? know you mentioned Colorado is when the program for those who are listening, like right now, what are the biggest markets or what are the best ways? say that someone is in a market that we've grades technology isn't currently active. What can they do maybe to try and get a pilot or other kind of program there to take advantage of it?

Yeah, so it is kind of still early days in this broader, you know, EV managed charging industry. Some of the biggest markets that we've grids in right now are Maryland, Colorado and California. Baltimore Gas and Electric and the Exelon utilities are really kind of at the forefront here. Same with Exel Energy. And then the California utilities, there's just higher EV adoption here. So they're kind of having to deal with some of those.

distribution level challenges already, where it's something that other utilities are just starting to try to understand and plan for. And so we have a program that we're running with Pacific Gas and Electric here in California that's really focused on three counties where EV adoption is the highest and trying to do that distribution level optimization. We also have a statewide California program that's funded by the California Energy Commission.

And that one isn't tied to a specific utility, but it's helping to kind of build understanding of where all of these vehicles are charging and how they're charging so that we can better inform these types of programs in the future. So for folks in those states and others, you can actually, you can go to our website, to the driver page, and we have links out to all of the different utility programs. And they're kind of, you know, spanning the country, but in certain utility territories.

And if you're not in one of those territories, but you want to see offerings like this, you could always kind of write into your local utility commission or into your utility and ask when these types of programs might be available. And that'll kind of help push them to get these things running. That's great.

And you know, that's really interesting when you're talking about when you look at California, Colorado and Maryland, those are obviously three geographical different locations, but also pretty different in a lot of ways, not just where they get their power from, but also obviously Colorado's got the mountains, not that California doesn't, but it just a lot of different types of different parts of the country.

And so I'm kind of curious, are there any trends or interesting things that have kind of already stood out to the Weave Grid team, maybe between these different territories and what maybe EV drivers are doing differently or how they interact with Weave Grid and the utility. think those states, it's just that the state level policy has really been aggressive in enabling EV adoption and pushing forward towards goals for percentage of EV sales and things like that.

And so that's why those utilities are also kind of at the forefront of this problem. In terms of trends across those areas with the folks that are involved in our programs,

We've really found that kind of the more tech savvy early adopters are really interested in trying to figure out how to optimize all this stuff themselves. But as we are getting into like more mass market EV adoption, which I think we're like still kind of on that upswing, but as there have been more and more EV makes and models available and people are testing them out, they kind of just want everything to be.

handled for them and to know that they're saving money and like doing the right thing. And I think it's hard to know that. And so that's why I think these programs can be really helpful in just taking away some of that complexity for them. No, that's great. mean, with the kind of setup that you're going with one of these utilities and kind of approaching them, can you kind of share? I think there's probably a lot of, has someone's kind of worked in that space.

Obviously there's like cyber security and those kinds of concerns, but I'm kind of curious, like, with a lot of the transformations we're seeing in utilities, I would say more often not, especially like now versus like a few, even a few years ago, they're much more open to these kinds of conversations, but I'm just kind of curious, probably security is one of them, but what are maybe either areas of pushback or just concerns you kind of hear when you first start speaking with the

utilities and kind of the other groups involved?

Yeah, cybersecurity is definitely one of the concerns. Also, access to these programs for their customers. think sometimes, you know, even as recently as a few years ago, and even still, like Tesla is the largest share of EVs on the road, and those have, you know, historically been seen as a luxury product. And so utilities want to be sure that they're not subsidizing their more. affluent customers and at the expense of everyone else.

And so there's been a lot of effort to figure out how to provide these types of programs for the broadest possible group of people and to also ensure that these programs are creating value for folks who don't even have EVs. And so that's why... some of this distribution level optimization, the idea is to put downward pressure on EV, on rates, electricity rates overall, by using the equipment that they have now more efficiently.

So instead of having to like build up additional power plants or, you know, poles and wires and all of that infrastructure to serve EVs. If we can move when the EVs are charging into times where like there's already a demand deficit and there's excess power, then that can actually create cheaper overall rates or at least not increased rates. And it ends up benefiting everybody. So I think that's actually a really big concern that we see from the utility side.

From the automotive side, because we have these active partnerships with automakers as well, They just want to know that their drivers are having the best possible experience, that they're saving money on charging when they can, that this transition from a gas-powered vehicle to an EV is something that's going well for them so that the investments that they're making in producing new lines of EVs are going to be beneficial for both them and for their customers.

Yeah, that's, I think that all makes sense. And it's kind of interesting when you think about it from like the larger utility objectives and making sure that, cause I think that's something we see pretty regularly with pilots and new technologies is like, how do you justify this as being beneficial to all the rate payers?

And I think to me, what really stands out is if you're really figuring out where and how you're taking advantage of the energy and the EVs, I mean, to me, the biggest thing that really stands out is like, having this technology could be a big way to avoid having to use a peaker plan or some of these other things when the grid starts getting more taxed.

And it seems like that would probably be a pretty quick path for your company's technology to more or less show in our ROI, but obviously provide that value to all rate payers more importantly. kind of like that conversation, when you look at what is going on with automakers too on the other side,

What do you see? I know even in my own work and kind of talking to others, there is. I guess maybe just to say it bluntly, there is like an apprehension with data sharing and like what APIs are like what level of sharing that you're or that they will kind of open up to you to be able to kind of work off of on your side. Are there any like levels of like, I guess if let's say I'm automaker ABC company or something, ask me company and I want to work with weave grid.

Do you know like what are kind of like the basic things you would need from our autom, our vehicles to start really providing value to the data side and helping both you and the utility. Yeah, so this has been, there's been a lot of evolution in the space and in telematics access to vehicles over even the past few years.

So at first, I think a lot of the automakers were just starting to understand the value in the data that they have from their vehicles as these vehicles were becoming much more tech enabled. And now with most new cars, you kind of operate the majority of the car from an app on your phone as opposed to like your key and things within the vehicle. I think there's kind of two approaches in the managed charging space. One is kind of using third parties to access the app that the drivers are using.

to scrape some of the data from the app and enable some controls of the vehicle. What WeaveGrid's doing is partnering directly with the automakers and in some cases the charging manufacturers to create a connection with their API through direct authorized means. And so what we're seeing is this kind of shift amongst the automakers towards trying to make that a much more secure access point only to partners that they're actively working with.

And so that has a lot of implications for the industry at large, kind of this section of the managed charging industry. But also the automakers are trying to monetize that data availability. EVs require a little bit less ongoing operation and maintenance support. And so if they're losing revenue there, they want to be making it up somewhere else. these telematic subscriptions are a way to do that.

What's interesting about that, though, is that a lot of the telematic subscriptions come free for the first year or two when you buy a new EV. And that allows you to do things like participate in these utility managed charging programs. It's really unfortunate though, when you hit that year or two year point and you said, you know, you get some kind of notice, hey, you need to start paying to participate in this EV program. And that really reduces the value of the program for you, right?

Like that cost might outweigh the benefits that you're getting from the utility incentives. And so that's another area where our relationships with the automakers really help enable these programs to be effective because we can wave that fee for the driver because we've kind of worked it out with the automaker to enable the cars enrolled in WeaveGrid programs to continue allowing access to the telematics without the driver having to pay for them.

So there's a lot of things kind of happening at once. The automakers are trying to kind of lock things down for the sake of both cybersecurity and for alternative revenue streams for them. And so I think that's why that direct partnership approach is really important to enabling the long-term success of these types of programs.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting call out about a lot of these newer telematics things because so much of the additional kind of that software layer that was added to a lot of these new EVs was because of that transfer essentially going from combustion engine to electric vehicles. And you're totally right. I think so much of, especially in fleets, we just saw so much of it being much more reactive and there would be kind of. costs associated with that obviously.

Now with electrification, now with a software layer, can really move towards a much more proactive approach to your fleets, especially when going through electrification. The downside obviously is unless you're like leasing them for two years at a time, you're right, you start kind of hitting this buffer where it's like, yeah, the first year or two years is great. then you start like, okay, Now it just seems like it, I agree with you. I'm not sure what the answer is to that.

And obviously not all the automakers are doing it quite the same way, but I could see that being definitely a bit of a, I don't want to say hindrance, but definitely can be kind of a weird experience for the end consumer when they've been using this and they've kind of gotten spoiled and really enjoy it. And now they're being kind of hit up with this second side of it.

guess, is there stuff that We've grid can do, let's say whether I guess my question would be, I, this may be a kind of a complicated one. there ways that we've grid, let's say maybe you're not paying for the full telematics thing, but we've grid can kind of use that and kind of get around that to still provide a lot of value and kind of get that, uh, overall better return for like a fleet member or even just someone who has a regular UV that's trying to be a part of this.

Yeah, with our partnerships with the automakers that we're working with, that's part of the contract. And so we are either covering that cost or have kind of negotiated for a bulk cost that's much reduced from what an individual would pay. And we are absorbing that to some degree. the end EV driver doesn't have to worry about that piece of it. Yeah, that's great. I guess. What we're talking about, and you kind of alluded to before, was obviously the security side of it.

So I'm kind of just curious what you can share about what WeepGrid is doing for not just security, but obviously privacy of user data when these EVs are connecting to WeepGrid and the larger grid in general.

Yeah, of course. So WeaveGrid is SOC 2 type 2 certified, which means we're taking the utmost level of security and customer data privacy and all of that. And that SOC 2 is really kind of regarded as the gold standard for data security practices. And then since we have those direct authorized integrations with the automakers and charging manufacturers, there's no third party in between WeaveGrid and your car. that kind of offers another step where something might happen with that data.

And we have more control over the data that is being shared. So we only collect the information that we absolutely need in order to kind of stop and start charging. And then, you know, we make sure we've deleted anything that like anything that might be PII. So we do take that very, very seriously. Utilities also take consumer protections very seriously. And so that's something we pay really close attention to because we're dealing with somebody's car.

You don't want to be locked out of your car. You don't want anybody accessing your car that shouldn't be. So that's very, very important to us. Yeah, that makes sense. And I know we've really been talking a lot about the actual, kind of financial incentives and some of that, but obviously a large part of the reason people go to electric vehicles is kind of the environmental. And I think it kind of alludes to what I mentioned earlier about the peaker plants, but I'm kind of curious.

yeah, I think as we've talked about, there's kind of like the fleet, there's the utility, and then there's the end consumer and the end consumer probably, while the financial benefits are definitely nice. I think a lot of people, especially in that early adopter phase are kind of more interested in like the environmental impact and kind of value that that has.

And so, I know you've mentioned it a little bit, but it would be curious to learn more about what we've grid really helps unlock with, the EV driver and kind of helping with environmental benefits of the technology.

Yeah, so think that's exactly right with the peaker plants. mean, historically, those were coal-fired plants. They're more often now gas-powered plants that can kind of turn on and off quickly. And those are some of the dirtiest forms of electricity. And so making sure that the cars are charging when there's excess capacity in the baseload power, which is usually cleaner electricity.

is step one, you don't want to buy an EV and then learn that you're charging on coal power because that's just as bad if not worse than driving a combustion engine. So that's a big part of it and it's a little more convoluted. There's a lot of things going into your power mix in the background and you don't always know where your electricity is coming from. But if we can ensure it's not at those dirtiest times, then that's step one.

And then it really depends on the specific utility program design. Like I said, I think one of our favorite ones to talk about is that Excel Energy Charging Perks program because it's very specifically taking a day ahead wind and solar forecast and then making sure that cars are charging during the times when there's a lot of solar power available or a lot of wind power available. And that's awesome. Then you really know you're charging. on renewable electricity.

And so we're hoping to launch more programs like that. We're also, we have a program with Luma Energy in Puerto Rico where we're helping people like optimize their own solar systems on their home to make sure they're charging off their own solar. And so that's kind of another thing that we're looking into as well, like taking in as much data as we can on the electricity mix that's present at any given time and then helping people charge at the cleanest times.

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. The example you just shared is that I guess to think through that, would that essentially be, depending if the solar and someone's home might be, whether it is a, I'm drawing a blank of the word, but essentially getting paid back to go on the grid, or is it essentially once you've kind of, you're producing more solar than, the home needs, you're just putting it right in the battery.

Can you walk through a little bit more of like what that looks like for the user data? Yeah, totally. Honestly, I'm not deep in the specifics of that program. My understanding is that a lot of people, we get this question a lot with our California drivers too. They're like, I have solar, wouldn't it, wouldn't it make more sense for me to charge during the day versus in the middle of the night? And we're like, well, your solar is kind of feeding back into the grid.

So you're not necessarily consuming right off of your home. And so that's helping like the overall grid, but it's still best for you to charge in the middle of the night. And I think that's sometimes hard for people to wrap their heads around. My, I think, and I might be wrong about this, with the Luma program, those are grid tied assets.

And so people kind of just receive a, you know, an additional incentive when they're charging at times where there's high solar production to, you know, help them feel better about the fact that they're charging. at times when there's a lot of solar power. But it is tricky. We would need to be doing kind of a whole home optimization to help people charge during those excess solar times as opposed to just pulling from the grid. And I that's something that we're exploring more for sure.

We've gotten a lot of requests for that in California specifically as well. Yeah, I think that's an interesting layer because, there's obviously that's like the ideal situation. think a lot of people want to do that, but of course, so many of these systems, especially with, even solar panels on homes, a lot of them until maybe as recently as the last five to 10 years, but so many of them weren't even internet connected.

So trying to get that level of data, having it communicate with an inverter, communicating with the utility, communicating with the actual, home power panel is a really kind of. think under, I think people just underestimate how difficult that challenge actually is to get all of these different systems to work in a perfect use case. And I think everyone might see like, well.

You look at like a Tesla Powerwall and that stuff and the marketing of it's great and the end goal is great, but it is just so difficult for all these different systems to kind of communicate and work together. But I think this is such a, in a lot of ways, it's a really great first step for people no matter where their. Solar panels are the actual kind of backend technology they have is at whether it's brand new or 15 years old.

is. Still an overall kind of big step forward to make sure that the solar energy is being utilized. And then the car itself, like you're saying is being charged while not maybe off your own solar at all times, but it could be off wind or other kinds of sources.

And with, with that, mean, is there kind of a end point that you see as far as what kind of like the next evolution of weave grid is or versus where it's at today that you can share about what the technology is kind of like hoping to achieve with it. Yeah, I think we're constantly listening to both our automotive partners and our utility customers to figure out what they want that next evolution to be and then how we can support that.

And so that might look like expanding into other EV use cases beyond residential and multifamily, which is largely where we're focused now to talk about fleet optimization. or even expanding out into other places where people charge like workplaces or public chargers. Or it would be expanding within the home to optimizing solar systems and batteries and thermostats. And I think those are all things.

Well, and then the third expansion I would say is beyond V1G or managed charging, which is what we're doing now, looking at vehicle to grid or vehicle to home V2X. as the next more depth of technology side of the space. And so we're exploring all of those options and our platform is capable of supporting all of those options.

But I think it'll come down to what makes the most sense for us as a business in order to stay focused and keep delivering on our core competencies that we have now while also reacting to the market and what folks are asking for. I think vehicle to grid is a super interesting one, kind of like what we were talking about before with this, you know, optimizing your whole home and then, you know, sending power back to the grid. And people are really excited about that concept.

Personally, I think a more near term use case is vehicle to home and either using your car as backup power or actually just like pulling your house somewhat off the grid at really expensive or strange times.

by using your car to power some key appliances or even your whole home, as opposed to like skipping that and going all the way back to the grid, which would require an inverter and a whole pricing mechanism and like a whole lot of optimization that gets really, really complicated when you get into it. And I think that's something everyone's really interested to figure out, but has not quite figured out yet. Yeah, I think that's a great call out.

That's definitely something we've talked about on this show a lot before is the concept of vehicle to grid is a great one. And it's not like it requires fusion or some sort of new extreme form of technology, but it does require a lot of technology all to be communicating with each other. And it still is kind of like out on maybe like a five to 10 year horizon to be much more, at least widespread. And I think it's a great call about the vehicle at home.

Cause I mean, if you even look at the EV market, it's only within the last few years that there's actually, I mean, obviously you've, you've only been really around for a decade, but then even within that, there's only a small subset that support vehicle to grid or vehicle to home technology as it is right now. And so I think what you're talking about exactly with either specific use cases of either a house or a fleet electrification opportunities.

It really is kind of the only thing that we have at the moment. Obviously a big step forward, but it's kind of, I think a lot of people get that image in their head, like, you just plug this in and everything just kind of automatically works together. And soon you're going to be backing up the grid with your new electric vehicle that you bought.

One of the questions I guess I have around that is the idea that you're kind of talking about, all these different use cases of how these technologies are working together. And when you hit on that, we haven't really talked much about is kind of the multifamily side of this. And I think that's actually a really large component currently to kind of getting wider, EV adoption, more widespread.

And would love kind of hear what WeaveGrade is doing in the multifamily home aspect of this to really kind of start unlocking and getting that snowball effect for some of these larger use cases.

Yeah, multifamily is kind of a challenging one because it's often a shared EV charger parking space, right? And so if you only have access to it for a short amount of time, you don't want to then have your charging curtailed during that time or being told that this is a peak time when you can't charge if that's kind of the window that you have and then you need to give it up for somebody else to use it. So. That's why it's been a little bit harder of a space.

But that being said, utilities are really interested in it because of that equity question we were talking about earlier and wanting to provide access to these types of incentive programs to everyone that drives an EV and not just people in single-family homes. We are soon launching a multifamily program with Portland General Electric. I am not.

personally super in the weeds of that one, but I think we're excited to be expanding out into that space and gathering more learnings from how to best run those multifamily programs. Because to my knowledge, there haven't been a ton. I think the initial market was really focused on that single-family home use case for a number of reasons. That's kind of where EVs were popping up first.

That's where utilities have the least insight into where a charger is being put in because you don't necessarily need to get a building permit or something to go ahead and do that. And you don't need to notify your utility. Whereas these multifamily buildings that have a bank or bay of chargers has probably informed the utility to some extent that they're doing that. And so they have a little bit more information and can plan for that.

Well, I think that's a really interesting call out too, because I mean, from the utility side, for all they know, you're just using your, maybe your home washing machine or something more. There may be seeing a slight little peak in your overall usage, but they can't really, or traditionally haven't really been able to attribute that to an electric vehicle.

And in the scheme, one house, not a huge difference when you start getting to a lot, but especially in the multifamily where you have so many. In one area they're trying to do this.

It seems like that there's a large amount of value in what can be unlocked with that. Is as far as kind of like pilots, I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. That's really interesting. Are there any other kind of pilots that your team is working on or kind of doing right now that you're able to share with us? Most of our, we're kind of in the phase right now of trying to transition a lot of our pilots to full scale programs.

I would say the, the like technology that we're deploying in more pilot phase, but that has expanded to full program in a few cases is our disco products, which is distribution integrated smart charging orchestration. And I had talked about this a little bit before, but really focusing on that. distribution level of the electric grid.

And so that's kind of the poles and wires, the transformers that bring electricity like to the home and making sure that we can help utilities avoid the need to upgrade or replace or add more of those assets, especially at a time where like the supply chain is still kind of messed up from the COVID days and tariffs are not necessarily helping that. And it's, you know, there are long lead times to get additional. transformers and they're getting more expensive.

so most of our, again, pilots that we're launching with utilities are taking that kind tried and true managed charging product and adding on this distribution level optimization to prove that that can be even more cost effective for the utility to then kind of go and expand that further. So that's the main thing that we're focused on right now.

Like I said, we're also kind of exploring things like VitaX and Multifamily and some of those other spaces where we have really strong partner client interests to go forward with one of those pilots. Are you able to kind of expand upon what some of those findings are from the transmission side? Because I know just a lot of different programs right now.

Transmission is kind of the thing people don't talk about, but it's what really holds back a lot of like kind of the evolution of more everything from micro grids to renewable energy on the grid to sometimes even just another DC fast charting for EVs. So if there's yeah, if there's anything around that you can expand on one like. what some of those wins are and kind of optimizing around that that we could help with. think that'd be really interesting.

There's other folks on our team who are much deeper in that space. We're actually hopefully soon going to be publishing something about kind of the transformer issues specifically and kind of some of the initial findings from our programs. I think there's also an additional study that's coming out relatively soon that we've been advising on that's looking deeper into like what managed charging can do to help.

like prolong the life of some of these assets and bring the costs to serve customers kind of at the end point of electricity distribution in a more efficient way. But I'm not in the weeds there, unfortunately. No, no, no worries at all. but I guess kind of going off that, like when you're like, let's say, I guess a step back and like, what are some of the challenges maybe like EV drivers might face when they're using managed charging service?

I know we've kind of mentioned kind of a, alluded to a couple of them, but I just be kind of curious about that. And like some of the ways that we've created can address them.

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge, know, managed charging program aside for EV drivers is knowing the right time to charge. And I think what managed charging programs do is help take that piece away from you. Like you don't have to worry about it. You just plug in when you get home and the program will make sure and the telematics integration will make sure that you're charging at the time that's cheapest for you and best for the grid.

And then once you're using a managed charging service, The next biggest challenge may come from how your automaker, your charger, and your utility are actually communicating with one another. If you're thinking about how should I be participating in this program, should I be using my OEM automaker app, should I be engaging with my utility directly? There's this other company like WeaveGrid that's involved.

And that starts to feel really disjointed and difficult to understand, you know, who's the source of truth. Like if I change my charging schedule on my automaker app, will that override WeaveGrid? Will WeaveGrid override that? And so like that still has been kind of tough across the whole industry. And like I said before, like in some cases, that telematic subscription disappears and then it costs you money.

In other cases, EV drivers have actually gotten locked out of their OEM app because there's a third party that's like pinging it for data constantly and it appears to their like bot sensors like it's a bad actor. Yeah. And so when we work with those vehicle and charger manufacturers directly, we're making sure that the drivers won't be locked out of their app, that the telematics access remains free.

But ultimately, the next evolution will be integrating our whole software platform into the OEM app so that there is actually no WeaveGrid experience that you're interacting with. You're just doing it through your Toyota app. And we're kind of operating in the background. And ideally, you don't even know that we're there. Right now, it's a very co-branded experience. And so we're really leaning on the utility branding on the automotive branding.

And there is a little bit of Weave Grid present, but we kind of want to fade entirely into the background to make this easier for everyone. And with Toyota, we've been working really closely with them. They recently invested in us as well to put all of that into the app. And so that kind of in-app experience should be launching relatively soon in a few markets and then hopefully expanding more broadly.

So that we kind of, you know, pull ourselves even further out of the equation to make that process a lot simpler for the driver. But in summary, I think right now it can be a little bit confusing who you as an EV driver should be interacting with to like fully engage in these types of programs. Yeah, it sounds like longer term then it would be mostly kind of on the utility side with some automaker partnerships Is that how you're kind of viewing it? Yeah, that's the idea.

Like I said, you know who your electricity provider is. Sometimes you might be frustrated with them, but you know that brand and you trust them because they are allowing you to turn your lights on, run your appliances, now charge your car. You also trust your automaker brand. You're looking at it every day when you get into the car. You see the logo right there. Increasingly, you need to use that app to run your car. you don't need to deal with another brand.

And so that's actually been a huge challenge of mine as a marketer is making sure that our brand is well known with automakers and with utilities. And we, to start, have to make it somewhat known with drivers as well so that they trust that we're a trusted player in this space. But ultimately, we will want to kind of like fade our consumer brand into the background and really lean on.

the utilities and the automakers to own that experience with us just enabling them to offer the best experience to their drivers or to their joint customers in EP Driver. So longer term, it probably would be at least from the consumer standpoint, you might get some email or something from your utility saying, hey, we've got this new program. You tap in the app or opt into it.

And then it just kind of all works in the background without ever knowing that it was actually WeaveGrid technology parent, all of this. Yeah, that's actually kind of the case right now. As much as possible, we lean on our automotive and charging partners to send those recruitment emails. Same with the utilities. Utility sent emails are kind of the gold standard for marketing these programs to folks.

And then, you know, we have like a customer support team who A lot of times people don't know that they're talking to WeaveGrid and not to their utility, but we want to take that off of the utility's customer service team's plate because, you know, ultimately we're a little bit more in the weeds of these programs. But yeah, the idea is to keep most of that experience with the utility or with the automaker.

Gotcha. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. guess one of the things, obviously we've grid kind of promotes its side of being like a big part of this is kind of the AI focus. Can you share a little bit of like, for those listening, like what is that AI layer that's really adding to weave grid or kind of making it stand out or what, what, what does that really mean? I feel like AI is around a lot. And I think what your team is leveraging is pretty interesting.

So I think it might just be really great to kind of highlight that. since I know we haven't quite kind of talked too much about that on this conversation so far. Yeah, there are a few aspects. One is we actually have an EV detection product. And so that takes AMI advanced metering infrastructure data and analyzes the electric load patterns at a home to determine whether or not we think there's an EV there based on spikes in electricity usage.

And that uses machine learning to understand what the spikes look like and then identify them as EVs and then take that back to the utility and say we think there are EVs here. And then we will often use that list that we've generated to market to those customers to pull them into programs. There's also an AI component to the distribution optimization work that we're doing. Kind of taking, it's almost like a game of Tetris, taking all of the cars and what we know about how much charge they need.

And then kind of fitting that into the dip in demand as it exists by taking in all the other grid information about what they expect demand to be even in that hyperlocal area. And so again, I'm not a technical person, but my understanding is that there is an AI component to that work just coming up with the most optimal solution for charging all of these vehicles in a set amount of time. Yeah, that's great.

I think it's kind of self explanatory, but I really kind of appreciate you covering that just because like I said, I feel like AI is so much in the space right now. Um, but I feel like you're one of the companies that are actually kind of been the ones actually leveraging it, uh, to have a lot of these things unlocked by it. Um, I know we've kind of covered quite a bit today and so I'm just kind of curious Kindle for anyone that isn't either.

sure if their utility is using WeaveGrid currently, like what's the best way for them to either get ahold of you or get ahold of the WeaveGrid team to see if they can either sign up or get it at least on their utilities radar.

Yeah, our website, www.weavegrid.com slash drivers has, if you scroll down a little bit, there's a list of utility programs and it's kind of like a wheel that you can click out to utility programs that are available that we're operating. And so if you see your utility there or you live in California and you can join the Charge Perks California program, that's not utility specific.

You can kind of click through and see if you're eligible for that program based on your zip code, like what type of utility rate that you're on, the vehicle that you have, the charger that you have. We're working on creating a space for folks who, if they go through that, find that they're not eligible, can like write in, we can keep that interest list.

But right now we also have like a contact form on our website where you can write in and ask if you're... if a program will soon be available in your area.

And then, I think, like I said before, you can always try to, it takes a little bit of research, but either like writing into your utility commission or like public service commission, or even to your utility and asking about these types of programs will just help to kind of push this innovation along and show that there's customer demand for these sorts of things. Well, that's perfect. And thank you so much for coming on today, Kendall.

This was really fascinating and great to hear kind of more of the stuff that WeaveGrid's been working on. And we'll definitely have to have you or someone or both, you and I, some of the other members of the WeaveGrid team back on soon. So thank you so much for coming on today. Yeah, thank you. It was great talking with you.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of Grid Connections. A big thank you to Kendall Cody for sharing her insights on how WeaveGrid is helping shape a smarter, more resilient energy future by bridging the gap between electric vehicle drivers and utilities. If this conversation sparked new ideas or helped you think differently about electrification, share it with a colleague or friend who's just as passionate about energy transition as we are.

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