Ought to the Firm Vehicles Go Electrical? Will depend on When You Cost

The Southern Firm didn’t want this pilot to promote it on EVs. The agency—which operates Alabama Energy, Georgia Energy, and Mississippi Energy, in addition to different subsidiaries throughout six southern and midwestern states—has been utilizing Ford electrical automobiles since 2023. Its fleet now contains greater than 200 F-150 Lightning vans and 150 Ford Professional chargers. The corporate at one level aimed to impress half of its fleet by 2030; it now says it’s not pursuing that objective, however will proceed to transition its automobiles.¹

Now it wished to see if it might use Ford Professional’s charging software program to ramp down its automobiles’ and chargers’ power consumption in periods of excessive demand. (Ford Professional is the business fleet arm of the US automaker.) Such “managed charging” applications save fleet homeowners cash by scheduling charging for instances when utilities are charging much less for electrical energy, and put much less stress on the electrical grid. Southern Firm is especially conscious of that final level: With the AI increase, knowledge facilities are flooding into the US southeast.

“We’re making an attempt to determine how we are able to save each kilowatt-hour that’s on the market to be saved, as a result of we’ll have a extra constrained system sooner or later,” says Lea Clanton, who directs enterprise improvement and innovation for Southern Firm New Ventures.

Paradoxically, the experiment’s most enjoyable moments got here when the 2 corporations labored collectively to close down all their chargers. By turning off the chargers for half-hour—one thing that could be instantly essential throughout very popular or chilly days, or throughout an emergency—Southern Firm and Ford say they had been capable of cut back the demand on the grid by 0.5 megawatts, instantly releasing up an quantity of electrical energy equal to what’s wanted to energy between 200 and 450 houses for a yr.

At some point, EV fleets like these operated by the Southern Firm would possibly use this kind of software program to save cash and electrical energy. However Clanton says the utility agency wants extra data earlier than it’s able to hook its EVs as much as smarter chargers. It wants to ensure that its drivers—particularly these responding to electrical energy emergencies—at all times have cost when the surprising occurs.

“If we had been to undertake one thing extra everlasting, we would want to take a while to raised perceive the place our drivers have to be, how typically they cost, and be sure that it’s not going to influence our supply of unpolluted, protected, dependable, reasonably priced power to clients in any respect, 24 hours a day,” says Clanton.

¹Replace, September 4 at 3 pm: This story was up to date to right particulars round Southern Firm’s efforts to impress its fleet.