Unlock EV Fleet Charging Savings and Support the Grid with PG&E’s Hourly Flex Pricing Pilot

The hourly flex pricing pilot is a dynamic hourly rate. It’s a constantly evolving, dynamic pricing signal. So, typical electricity rates are either flat or, if they do vary by time, it's sort of on a fixed daily schedule. But the hourly flex pricing pilot rate varies every day. 

In addition to that, it also compensates exports. So, energy that's sent back to the grid gets compensated. And thirdly, it has mechanisms in it that make it kind of risk-free for the customer, so customers are protected from their bill increasing under the pilot.  

From a fleet perspective, the big benefit is that it can reduce their electricity costs. 

There are more opportunities because of the dynamic nature of this price signal to get your electricity bill lower than on typical rates  ition to that, because of the nature of the dynamic price, it allows you to support the grid in different ways that you wouldn't typically be able to through a standard rate. 

So, it's kind of reducing costs for all utility customers and helping also accelerate renewable energy being adopted on the grid.  

We are a registered automated services provider, which means you can enroll your site onto the pilot and have The Mobility House receive the price signal.  

We're integrated with the pricing vendor, GridX. So, we can automatically receive the price signal into our system so that we can optimize charging around the signal. And in addition to that, The Mobility House really has best-in-class algorithms to optimize your charging around the signal. 

Given how dynamic the nature is, you really need robust algorithms that can really take into account the dynamic nature of the signal and also combine that with the fleet's mobility needs, any local grid constraints, and so forth.  

Yes, fleets can use bi-directional charging to optimize around the HFP rate. The pilot compensates energy that is exported back to the grid. 

So that's ideal for bi-directional or vehicle-to-grid technology. When your vehicles are discharging, they're getting compensated for that energy that gets sent back to the grid, which is not that common among pilots around the U.S. And in actual fact, the way the pilot is designed and the way that the baselining works, sometimes that exported energy can be especially valuable. 

Fleets should consider when they're enrolling in this pilot that the HFP rate can be extremely lucrative, but it's not always lucrative for all customers in all situations. So it's really important that you assess your technology, where you are on the grid, what additional loads you have on site to figure out exactly how much you think you can make from this rate, because it may be better to stay on your existing rate.  

So that's really important. In addition, the pilot is designed to generally give you more opportunities to save money. The way the pilot's designed, though, you may see in the interim period, your bill might go up because of the way we shift our optimization strategy to focus around the HFP. 

And the way that the pilot works, you get credited from the pilot at the end of the year, but in the interim, your bill may increase. So that's something to bear in mind. But overall, you can, in some cases, generate a huge amount of value from participating. 

 

To get started, you can reach out to TMH. 

We can conduct some modeling and analysis studies to figure out whether your site is a good candidate for the HFP rate. We are also a registered automated services provider. So if we decide that it's the right opportunity for you, we can enroll you into the pilot and start optimizing your site to get you the lowest possible bill, whilst also meeting your mobility needs and grid constraints. 

If you want to find out more about the pilot, PG&E posts a lot of really good information on their website as well, which we can provide links to.