Engaging Utilities: Rural Cooperatives Working to Deploy EV Charging (Text Version)

This is a text version of Engaging Utilities: Rural Cooperatives Working to Deploy EV Charging, presented on June 18, 2024.

Bridget Gilmore, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Hi everyone. Welcome to the webinar today. We'll get started in just a little bit as we allow folks to start entering the room. Thanks so much for being here. We will get started just a couple moments. Thank you for taking some time out of your Tuesday. All right. It's a good time. We will get going. Thank you all for being here.

Today's topic is on engaging utilities. We're specifically going to be hearing from rural electric cooperatives who are looking to deploy EV charging and support their members with the uptake of electrified transportation. It's—yeah, great to get to be here with you all.

So, on today's webinar we're using Zoom. So just so you know, for a little bit of housekeeping, the controls are located at the bottom of your screen. If they're not appearing, you can feel free to toggle your cursor towards the bottom edge. And we're going to be using the Q&A window today for taking questions.

So if you could please direct your questions, those two little bubbles speaking to one another, that is the perfect place for people to actually get to respond to your question directly. As a disclaimer, this webinar is being recorded and may be posted on our website or used internally. So if you speak during the webinar or use video, you are presumed to consent to recording and the use of your voice or image.

So in terms of our agenda today, we are going to have a brief introduction from our wonderful senior advisor, Sejal, and we'll then have presentations from four different panelists. We'll have one presentation from NRECA and then three rural electric co-ops. We're going to leave plenty of time for lots of discussion and questions. So like I said, feel free to be sure to drop some questions along as you are listening to today's webinar.

So I'll pass it over for our senior advisor, Sejal Shah. She works with specifically electric utilities. She has wonderful expertise coming from the IRU space. And I can let Sejal talk a little bit more about herself as well. Thanks, Sejal.

Sejal Shah, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Thanks, Bridget. Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I'm going to provide a brief overview of the Joint Office and the work that we're underway—we have underway. So the Joint Office was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and we sit between the Department of Transportation and Department of Energy to help facilitate and electrify transportation and to work with these two very large agencies that have not had to work together before and to work on this one mission to accelerate an electrified transportation system that is affordable, convenient, equitable, reliable and safe. And our vision is that we want everyone to ride and drive electric.

So we're not just focused on the light-duty sector, but we are working on the medium heavy-duty side and working on the transit and school bus side as well.

Next slide, please. So for the Joint Office through the BIL, we were given a specific task. And one of the big ones is to support for very large grant programs that one existed prior to the BIL and three that came out of it. But the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program—that's NEVI—that you may have heard of, and that is it's $5 billion.

It's formula funding where Congress decided this is a formula based on that each state is designated a pot of money to deploy electric vehicle chargers in their state, in their territory. And every year each state presents a NEVI plan to the Joint Office and FHWA for approval. And I can happily say that all 52 jurisdictions, 50 states, district of Columbia and Puerto Rico, all 52 plans have been approved and over $148 million have been awarded from that.

So the next large grant program is the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program— CFI that you may have heard of. And this is a discretionary grant program where applications are sent directly to FHWA. The application period actually just opened about two weeks ago, and this is a total of $2.5 billion for community and corridor grants for EV charging, as well as hydrogen, natural gas and propane fueling infrastructure.

The next program that we support is the low-no emission grant program. And this one is facilitated and managed by the US DOT. This one did exist prior to the BIL, but it has been bolstered considerably with $5.6 billion for low and no emission transit bus deployments.

And the other program that came out of the BIL is the Clean School Bus program that the EPA manages, and that provides grants for school bus, either directly to the districts or operators to electrify the school buses and infrastructure.

Next slide, please. One note I wanted to make is we do provide a ton of technical assistance. And we launched the Clean Bus Planning Awards related to the transit and school bus side of the shop to help transit agencies and school bus operators with technical assistance to help create fleet electrification transition plans. So it's an entire holistic view of their fleet and there isn't a one off. And so this is open right now. You can apply it's rolling admission. Please click on this link if you're interested or send it along to your territories.

Next slide, please. There is a ton of work and a ton of resources that are available on the Joint Office website. There is a rural and urban EV toolkit. There are some forecasts and reports on what the national EV charging network needs to look like, as well as what the impact of EVs will be on the grid that are available. This is work that we've done with the national labs, with Joint Office support, and then we've also created some help sheets and checklists that can help either operators or folks that are helping electrification move that along and understand what the impacts of whether it's hot weather or cold weather.

We've also recently launched—I think we're going to get into the next slide—battery buffered case study. So if you have an EVSE, you have a great constrained site. And one of the options is potentially to put battery storage there to support the need of that EVSE and get that project done faster. So that information and that case study is also available on driveelectric.gov.

Next slide, please. So the best way to get in touch with us other than directly connecting is to please put in to the Contact Us form on the Joint Office website and please subscribe to the newsletter. Both links are there. General questions and feedback are very much welcome. If you don't see a particular ask or a particular technical assistance or a report that you're considering or you think you need, please put that into the Contact Us form and we'll get back to you within 48 hours.

Next slide, please. We're going into the polling question. So Derek will go to poll one first, please. And this is what we're trying to understand, what region of the country attendees are coming from. So if you could take a minute and select your region.

Derek, let me when we're at quorum here. Excellent. So we've got a pretty good mix here. Northwest, southwest, upper midwest, southeast and northeast are covered. Excellent. Thank you. And we do have a follow—a second poll on the sector that you're representing. So please take a second to respond to this poll.

I think that should be good, Derek. Let's see. We've got a whole bunch of utilities. 35% some state government, some EV industry folks. So happy to have you all here and understand from the co-op world how they're thinking through transport to—transportation electrification. Thank you for joining.

Thanks, Derek. We can pull that down, so I won't—I'll let us get to the meat of this and get to our speakers. But for the rural co-op side, why we decided to have this conversation in this webinar is to really present the unique challenges, but also the unique opportunities that electric co-ops have towards transportation electrification. So I'm really happy to present our speakers today.

We have Jennah Denney with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. She is Electric Vehicle Strategy and Solutions Manager with NRECA, and she leads the development, implementation of innovative and impactful EV programs and projects for electric cooperatives across the nation. She is amazing. I've worked with her over the last year, and her knowledge on what the co-ops are doing and feeling and the impact that EVs are having on the respective co-ops by territory is amazing.

Then we're going to move on to Trico Electric Cooperative with Chelsea Mead. Chelsea is the Energy Solutions Program Manager with Trico, based in Tucson, Arizona. She has been with Trico for six years within the renewables and energy efficiency team. And as a PM, she assists in the program design and implementation for Trico's EV battery, solar.

Cyril Brunner, Vermont Electric Cooperative: Think we lost you there.

Sejal Shah: Sorry. Can you hear me now?

Speaker: Yes, we can.

Sejal Shah: OK. I don't know what happened. The system muted me. All right. I will introduce John Gorski. Will be our last speaker. He's with Flathead Electric Cooperative. John has worked with Flathead for over 25 years on power, rates and compliance issues. He's a Chevy Volt commuter, Tesla Model Y traveler. And for fun, he hauls hay with an electric, hybrid international truck, which I would love to hear more about. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Jennah.

Bridget Gilmore: Hey, Sejal. Sorry to interrupt you. I think that my connection got unstable too, but I think we missed Cyril's introduction. If you wouldn't mind reading that one too.

Sejal Shah: You got it—all right. So Cyril Brunner is with Vermont Electric Co-op. Cyril is the Innovation and Technology Leader at Vermont Electric. He has worked since 2012 there, and he focuses on seeking out insights to lead the EC's members and staff through the energy transition and leads the IT team technology strategy and integrated resources planning. So he's got multiple hats like many folks in the co-op world, and I'm looking forward to hearing about that.

So I will turn it over to Jennah now. Did that make it through?

Bridget Galmore: Yeah, that made it through.

Sejal Shah: Excellent.

Jennah Denney, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association: Awesome. Yeah, loud and clear. Thanks, Sejal, and hope everybody can hear me OK. And I agree. I would like to see this hybrid international truck, John. That sounds interesting. Would you mind going ahead and transitioning me to the next slide. Thank you.

So as Sejal mentioned, I'm the EV Strategy and Solutions Manager for the National Rural Electric Cooperatives or the NRECA. And I want to take a moment as we talk about what these co-ops are doing in the EV space to support their membership, that desire to adopt these technologies and making sure that their rural communities aren't left behind as transportation electrification occurs. But I want to take a moment and level set on who the co-ops are historically and how we are positioned for this transportation electrification revolution.

Go ahead and—thank you. So by the 1930—we're going way back. The urban areas were well lit, but rural areas still lacked electricity as investor-owned utilities, provided most of the nation's power, pleaded for poverty over the buildup cost of areas where density and profits may have been lower. Solving this problem was part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The Rural Electrification Administration was born.

And then in 1936, the Rail Electrification Act was passed, which allowed for the Electric Corporation Act to occur to allow for cooperatives to be formed in different states. This also allowed the REA to provide low-interest loans to bring lights to life and the infrastructure to rural communities, as well as other forms of assistance and professional services. Though, we look back at the farm communities that we started serving back in the 30s, today, co-ops from booming suburbs to rural remote areas and communities. America's electric cooperatives are energy providers, but not in the sense of just a power plant with producing kilowatt hours.

They're also engines of economic development within their communities. Electric cooperatives keep the lights on and play a pivotal role in transforming communities. Just a few facts about these communities served by electric co-ops. There are 42 million of Americans, including 92% of counties in persistent poverty. This also includes 22 million businesses, homes, schools and farms across 48 states. Co-ops they're focused on their consumer members, focus on people, not profits and return over a billion in capital credits to their consumer members annually as a not-for-profit electric utility.

America's electric cooperatives are made up of 832 distribution cooperatives that serve as the backbone of the electric cooperative network, supplying member to the consumer members at the end of the line. 64 generation and transmission electric cooperatives provide wholesale power through their own generation facilities or through purchase power facilities on behalf of distribution electric cooperatives.

And in their nature, co-ops can be regulated or unregulated, meaning that regulated co-ops will be subject to state regulations, including their governance adherence to certain standards, where unregulated co-ops and regulated co-ops share a commonality is that are board-led by a democratically elected board members made up of their communities. These are people that are representative of the community served and serve as the regulated counterparts for electric cooperatives.

Again, the co-operative difference we're talking about electric cooperatives serve their communities and are uniquely suited to meet the local needs. Each co-operative is so different, though. We're going to hear from three different ones today and their approaches, their value propositions around the different programs that they have in place.

But again, another common thread between us is keeping rates affordable and responsible, especially for these consumer members. One in four cooperative households are under the annual income of $35,000 a year. Unlike the rest of the electric sector, co-ops primarily sell most of their power to households—nearly 53%. And at the same time, we also are serving more as electric, more electrification occurs in the household and in the industries we serve.

Electric cooperatives served almost 5% more electricity in 2022 than they did the previous year. Electric cooperatives rely on a diverse set of resources to reliability, reliably meet the energy needs of their communities. Always available energy being the key. But co-ops are also incorporating renewables to complement always available energy resources. Since 2016, co-ops have doubled their renewable capacity, totaling nearly 15.8 gigawatts. And there's an additional 5.3 gigawatts that have been announced of renewable capacity additions through 2027.

And as early 2024, we've had over 60 cooperatives in 30 states selected to move forward with funding negotiations for more than $1 billion in federal funding around technology such as clean energy technology, such as microgrids and carbon capture, as well as transmission and distribution upgrades and projects around electric vehicles.

If you mind advancing to the next slide. So I've given you a lot of facts to level set who the co-ops are. But visually, co-ops are 56% of the nation's land mass. And given our reach, we have an important role to play as the nation's EV charging network is being built and different adoption levels occur across the country. With a heavy emphasis on electrification to meet the nation's future clean energy goals, it's a heavy emphasis also on the role that the electric cooperative can play. If you look at this map, just to clear up any confusion, we serve the green portions of this land mass. When connecting America's state cooperatives will play a play different roles as partners and facilitators of this EV infrastructure.

Cooperatives across the country are currently offering different rates, programs and deploying infrastructure to support EVs. And this takes different flavors and facets across the country, driven by state policy, vehicle availability and the presence of public infrastructure.

Please advance to the next slide. What co-ops are doing to predict, plan and mitigate impacts with members is putting those members at the front of the mind. Again, we focus on people and nonprofits. So conducting everything from outreach to educating our members as the experts in all things energy on unbiased information around this technology, identifying the EVs within our service territory to best know how to serve these members through programs rates that are grid friendly as well as friendly to the member.

Planning around that is understanding the behavior and the presence of these vehicles and charging and demand side response to re-opt to some of this and to mitigate the need for costly upgrades that can reduce cost, ultimately for the co-op and the member at the end of the line.

Again, we're going to hear today from the members. So I won't dwell too much this on how they're planning and managing for this new EV loads. But on the next slide we are hearing from members today, but we also hear from members across the country.

If you advance to the next slide. We hear from them in our cooperative approach to vehicle electrification or the CAVE. This is a group that was formed out of 130—over 130 co-ops and growing focused around four main goals. But the main centrist of this is having a network of electric cooperatives that are working on or planning to implement a variety of EV programs. Focused on the low income and rural communities we serve, education not only for those member consumers, but for the dealerships—the trade associations for trucking, policy makers, and forming relationships with organizations such as the Joint Office today on the value of electric transportation within the co-op communities.

We explore options specific to fleets, whether those are our own and workplace or the school buses that almost nearly all of our cooperatives serve or the advent of the medium heavy-duty vehicles that we expect to see in response to the national freight strategy or the EPA tailpipe emissions. But above all else, it's demonstrating and sharing information about the programs that the co-ops across the country are administering to support their members during this transportation electrification journey.

Next slide. Again, part of the CAVE and part of the work we do at NRECA is cultivating partnerships to prepare for transportation electrification and positioning co-ops as a valued partner across all of the steps that it takes from building out the network to the initial adoption of the vehicles in their territory. Though smaller in nature and serving about 13% of the electric load of the nation, we still make up a huge, part of this land mass and are well positioned for challenges and innovative solutions leveraging our member service background. We've had the honor to collaborate with these organizations and thank you for the Joint Office for joining us here today.

I'll go to my last slide just to talk about, again at the national level, how we look at some of this before we take it back down to the local co-op level. But recently out of the Vehicle Technology Office, NRECA was awarded funding for the rewired project, which looks at the utility workflows associated with interconnecting or energizing EV charging infrastructure, whether that's at the home, whether that's in public or for specific fleets.

This looks at how we set member expectations around timelines, the cost associated with these EV charging sites and scalable solutions for streamlining those processes, including a guidebook and a desktop level tool to analyze transformer loading. As we know, some of the issues that not just rural electric co-ops are dealing with, but all utilities and any in this industry are supply chain issues associated with transformers and switch gears.

Those are a few of the challenges that have been identified. But we're looking at ways that outside of supply chain, how can we reduce the need for those upgrades and improve timelines associated with making sure rural America is supported with EV charging infrastructure?

I'll pass it off now. This is my contact information if anyone has any questions. We have Chelsea Mead now from Trico Electric Cooperative. They're doing quite a bit in the EV space. I'm excited to hear from her and the rest of the co-ops today. But without further ado, Chelsea.

Chelsea Mead, Trico Electric Cooperative: Thank you, Jennah. It's awesome to hear what the co-ops are doing and reinforces how proud we are to be a cooperative in the cooperative space. That was really awesome overview. Thank you. So my name is Chelsea Morrison—oh, I'm sorry, Chelsea Mead. And I am with Trico Electric Cooperative out of Tucson, Arizona, so located in southern Arizona.

Next slide, please. So does a little bit about Trico and the members and territory that we serve. So Trico surrounds the area of Tucson, Arizona. We have about 50,000 members, 140 employees, and about 4,000 miles of line. So you can see on our service territory map here. We have a pretty vast and expansive service territory. We have a line that runs all the way down to the Mexico border. So, again, pretty vast territory that we cover. And we are a fully regulated cooperative by the Arizona Corporation Commission. And you can see some of our load data here, which is probably not super surprising to see our summer peak here. But just to give you an idea of what Trico serves.

Next slide, please. So our strategic direction. So Arizona is currently a non-competition state, but we know that can change. So Trico is really preparing—so how we can have a competitive future where we're able to serve our members, the innovation that they're demanding and still providing them great value, even when they could potentially have other aggregators and other utility choices potentially in the future. So we're really preparing for that. And we can continue through the slide.

So a few ways of doing that is of course, we're considering how we're managing our power supply. So ensuring ample resources, including traditional resources distributed and also our member-owned assets. And then a really big focus on member satisfaction. So how are we continuing to gauge our members and really understanding what their expectations and their needs are from us as a partner and of course, reliability. So how are we going to continue delivering a reliable service to our members that's also enhancing trust and empowering progress to move forward?

Next slide. So for our EV roadmap, we are currently taking a five-year approach to this. We have a pretty, pretty big team that has been working on this from all different departments across the co-op. So we're really trying to take a strategic approach to developing this roadmap.

So a lot of that is researching what other cooperatives are doing with their home charging programs and really having our objective being how do we continue to have our members charge and continue to purchase cooperative provided power? We're also researching charging stations, pricing how this integrates into our systems, our metering systems and then diving into retail pricing and incentives for our members considering subscription-based models for our in-home charging units. And then also determining if there's any subsidiary needs that we would need. I'm sorry.

Sejal Shah: Sorry. You're OK. Keep going.

Chelsea Mead: OK. And so if we're on the level-two chargers. Go ahead. So I'm mainly going to focus on our residential programs today because we do have two active residential programs, our public and fleet. We, of course, are considering what those programs could potentially look like. We don't have any active public or fleet and we'll get into to those challenges there. But again, heavy on the residential programs today.

So our first program that we have rolled out for probably approaching a year now is our member owned. So it really is a essentially a time of use charging rate for our members. So they're able to charge at a discounted rate between the off-peak period of 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. So they're charging at about $6.50 per kilowatt hour, which is about a 45% reduced rate from their standard retail rate. It is capped at 400 kilowatt hours per month. The reason that is, is because this is not sub metered. So we're actually using interval data to calculate the usage that's happening between that 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. period. So it is capped at that 400 kilowatt hours and that's per billing cycle. So essentially, per month.

So again, just a discounted rate for members to encourage them to charge during that off-peak period and again using that interval data. This is just applied as a credit each month towards the member's bills. So however, if they're maxing out at the 400-kilowatt hours, it's about a total savings of $21.08. Of course, that's the max. So it's calculated depending on how much of that 400 is used during that time period.

So this program has been really successful for us. We have over 350 members who are currently participating in this program. That's a great adoption rate for us. So Trico has about maybe 1,000 EVs in our territory that we're aware of, and we are using some more data analytics to hone in on that number more to get it to be more exact. So for us, that's a really good adoption rate currently and it's continuing to grow month over month.

Go to the next slide, please. And then we also have our new unlimited charging program. This is Trico's-owned asset program. So Trico is actually providing the level-two charger to our members. So it is a Trico-owned asset. So on the unlimited charging plan, again, they have two off-peak charging periods. So those off-peak periods are between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and then 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. Those are the off-peak periods.

So any charging that happens off peak is unlimited. So the member's just paying a flat monthly fee. As you can see listed here, it is based on the charger size. So they pay the $64 up to $71 a month flat fee. And any charging that occurs during those off-peak hours is unlimited. So it's not billable.

Now, on peak charging is $0.25 per kilowatt hour. So it is a pretty significant increase. It's about double the standard retail rate for members that they choose to charge on peak. And this one is actually sub metered. So the meter is actually built into the charger itself. So unlike the time of use program, we are submetering all of the data here through that. We do have some great control settings that members have opted into to help them manage their charging and to make sure that they're avoiding those on-peak periods.

Now they are, of course, are able to opt out of those control settings. We know there's emergency situations where they may need to charge during on-peak periods, but we are doing a lot to assist the members in managing their charging to help avoid those on-peak periods. We currently have 18 members participating in this program. Twelve are in the queue to be installed. About that many who are pending an assessment which I'll jump into here too. So this program is most likely about to double in the next coming weeks.

Next slide, please. So with that again, Trico is completing the installation of the charger. We also own and maintain the unit. So Trico did conduct an RFP process to determine which charger, which chargers we would like to use. So we did end up with the company named ZEF, which [INAUDIBLE] may be potentially very familiar with. So ZEF is our charger partner and provider. So what we did is we defined what a standard installation would look like. So when we go out to do an install, do the assessment for us, a standard installation is a 240 volt socket with about 20ft from the main service panel to the charging location.

Next slide, please. So in the EV readiness assessment that we're doing, Trico actually hired an in-house journeyman electrician. So our electrician, his name is Matt. He's fantastic. He's completing an assessment for each member who is applying for the program. So he goes out to do an initial assessment of the current service. So he's looking at the loads in the panel. He's looking at the location—the charging location—having the ability to do some customization with the member in terms of where they want their charging location to be. He's completing the installation, and then he's also handling all the maintenance in the field of the chargers as well.

So having an in-house electrician has been really beneficial in streamlining our process. Having everything in house is really great, to have that one on one and to be able to really provide our members great customer service. And so again, we assess the home for EV readiness. We'll determine if there is any upgrades that are needed. So if there's anything outside of that standard installation, we do provide the member an estimate of what that work would look like. They can choose to have a completed third party. So not using Trico or they can have us complete that non-standard installation. We do give them a credit towards that for the standard installation cost, which is really nice as well.

And then again, the member can choose if they would like us to complete that work or third party. So a couple of options there for our members to get their home ready for an EV.

Go to the next slide. And then the future for home charging really looks for us is some managed charging. So we are currently, considering vendors to help get our managed charging program going and what that's going to look like. So that's on our 2025 roadmap. That'll be the next step for home and then vehicle to grid charging. That is going to be something we going to start building some infrastructure for beginning in 2025 and 2026.

Next slide, please. So in the public charging space again, Trico doesn't have any currently active public chargers or programs, but a couple of models that we are considering. So third party or member owned. So this would be on a demand and energy rate. And then we also are considering Trico-owned. So Trico at this point, based on being a fully regulated cooperative—you saw our service territory. It's very vast. So Trico is public charging infrastructure is really going to be dependent on some significant grant funding that we would need to obtain to be able to build that out.

So we did apply for a NEVI grant with a local IOU, Tucson Electric Power, and we were not part of that round of grants. So we did not receive that funding. We, I believe, are planning on to reapply for that. But in our proposal or application, we were proposing 10 Trico-owned chargers throughout Pima County, which is the largest portion of our service territory. We conducted an RFP in 2023 and then this is going, well, it would include about 300 kilowatt hours of battery storage per those 10 sites. So that's our general idea and hope of the direction that we would be going. But again, that would be dependent on funding from grants.

So on the fleet side, Trico is very heavy residential. So we don't have a lot of the large commercial services like our Amazon's or a lot of those larger commercial services that have large fleets. There's a lot of interest. There's a lot of prime land in Trico service territory. So our economic development team is really working to build that out, to bring in some of those larger commercial services. But currently, that's just not really the demographic of our service territory. So we're really trying to gauge interest right now on our smaller commercial services who have smaller fleets. The interest has been minimal.

So we're really trying to start those educational conversations and really trying to engage with our smaller commercial services to gauge what the hesitation potentially may be to determine what that is going to look like for us. I think we lost your screen, Bridget.

Sejal Shah: Well, I think she had some broadband issues. Let me pull it up. Chelsea, give me one second.

Chelsea Mead: Sure.

Sejal Shah: I'll put it on screen, OK? Give me one second.

Steve Lommele, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Sejal, I can jump in and share if that would be helpful.

Sejal Shah: I can't tell if anyone can hear me, but apologies for the technical difficulties. I see someone, or Steve, it looks like you're sharing. Thank you. Yeah. Steve—

Steve Lommele: Hear you—

Sejal Shah: Chelsea.

Steve Lommele: Chelsea, sorry. Which side would you like?

Chelsea Mead: Keep going down. We're pretty much towards the end here. So if you continue down to the second to last on the fleet there. There we go.

So again, going back to just really gauging the interest of our current commercial services and seeing what that looks like two models that we would be considering or again Trico-owned. So we would be managing the charging through an owned asset. And then we have the member-owned. So this would really include rates, providing different rates for small, medium, and large fleets and having also active management on those.

So Trico would plan to provide some financial assistance to help manage the charging. So this would be in the form of rebates, loans and then separately metered pricing. We also are considering applying for a program that provides low-interest loans to our members. It can be used for EV readiness and charging. So that would also be a program potentially available to residential and commercial services to take advantage of low-interest loans to help meet their EV plans and programs that they're desiring.

Can you go to the next slide? So that is the overall view of Trico's current active residential EV programs and our plans for fleet and public charging. So if you have additional questions, here is my contact information. Feel free to reach out. Thanks for joining us today. And I am going to pass this to Cyril. And Jennah, I do see, yes, that is the rest. So we are currently finalizing our application to apply for further funding.

Steve Lommele: Chelsea, I don't know if you saw, but someone had their hand raised. I don't know if you want to answer their question now—Nick Zarovich.

Chelsea Mead: I did not see that.

Sejal Shah: If anyone has any questions, feel free to drop them into the section titled Q&A and we'll make sure we address those once everyone has had a chance to share.

Cyril Brunner: Perfect. Cool. I'm going to share my screen, if you don't mind. Steve, you can't do until it stops. Sorry. Once you get out of yours, then I can do mine. Perfect. Thank you. Great. Awesome.

Hi, everyone. Cyril Brunner from Vermont Electric Cooperative. I'm going to do a brief overview of who VEC is, some of the challenges we face, our managed programs, and then some of the fun stuff we're working on, which is managing these vehicles so that we can defer some infrastructure investment.

So a little bit about VEC. We're a little smaller than Trico, 34,000 members. A lot of renewables on the system. Our goal is to be 100% renewable by 2030. We have 50mw of distributed renewables already by and large due to very aggressive state policies and incentives towards that. Around 600 EVs in the system. And then the key point I think I'll mention here is 1.2 metre per transformer. So typical transformer size is about 10 KVA. Generally, I have one to two folks on there and I'll touch on that a little bit later as to why that matters from an EV standpoint.

So a little bit about Vermont Electric Cooperative. We serve the northern half of Vermont. There is another co-op in Vermont. Washington Electric Co-op and then we have New Hampshire Electric Co-op. There's a couple other much smaller ones that are in the region. But unlike a lot of the country, the northeast is not filled with a ton of electric cooperatives. One unique part about VEC, and I would say Vermont in general, is we have a statewide transmission operator, VELCO. So we do not operate underneath a GNT, which is fairly common in the cooperative space. That means that we have a little bit of additional flexibility. We see some of these peak shaving benefits a little more clearly than others do and generally very collaborative relationship with our transmission operator.

Also, a quick fun topic. We're the only state capital in the country that does not have a McDonald's in it. So impact of electrification. You know, for us right now, today, our focus is on the residential side. We are a largely residential cooperative, and we are seeing impacts today on the local home side of things, especially as it relates to electric vehicles. So a little bit of information here. This is some data that we have collected from our system as it relates to the average load throughout the day. Vermont, unlike a lot of the country, does not have AC load, does not have electric heating, and as a result, does not have a ton of load during the day.

Now, there's probably other little spikes that happen, washer dryer, those types of things, but by and large, most of this load is underneath the 10 KAV average I mentioned with a heat pump that increases, of course, and about 15% of our members have heat pumps today on our territory. So that's definitely something we're seeing. The real challenge, I would say capacity wise, we're generally OK when we start seeing electric vehicles.

And we have around 600, as I mentioned prior, that can cause issues on this local transformer. And the average EV charging speed that we see on our territory is 7.8 kilowatts. We've seen chargers at the 19.9 kilowatts level that causes distribution transformer issues, especially if they already have some heat pump installed, which generally happens to be the case. These folks are generally on the front end of electrification and therefore, might have multiple types of electrification.

So I'll touch a little bit later on what we're trying to do in this space, system wide, this impact looks fairly significant. We have an 80-megawatt peak today. We think we're going to at least double that if we don't manage these devices, which is really one of the big reasons we're interested in managing electric vehicles outside of the peak impacts is the potential infrastructure impacts associated with that. We're anticipating around $100 million in grid upgrades and even more at the transmission level. I mean, this is nothing new. This is what people are seeing across the region. What we're hopefully trying to pilot and do is reduce that impact.

We believe we're going to continue to need to invest. So we have increased our standard transformer size from 10 to 15 KVA. We're actively replacing around 250 miles of legacy conductor 10 miles annually. We're hoping to increase that with grant funding to make that a little faster. At the end of the day, the grid infrastructure is the foundation. Regardless of what we do on the management end, we are going to need to invest into the system to make that a reality.

And key cog I guess into the next piece is really this existing data that we have being, GIS data, AMI data. The data that I shared prior is very foundational into us being able to manage DER for this infrastructure standpoint. I'll touch on some more details here in the next couple of slides. But really what we're trying to do right is create these virtual power plants exist—integrate DER OEM's, model those impacts, experiment with programs and pilots, and then orchestrate that through software.

I mentioned before, believe that we're not going to eliminate the impact. We certainly believe that we can manage upwards of 75% of electric vehicles on the system. Heat pumps are a bigger challenge. And no, not the topic of this conversation, but definitely an area that we're not as bullish on. And as it relates to the transmission grid in Vermont, the new England region, there's a lot of opportunity to provide cost savings as we go further up the chain as well.

So we have a flexible load program. I'm going to touch on these a little bit. They're in these four categories. So identifying where those assets are, where those DER are, investing to upgrade the system, experimenting and managing with programs and then orchestrating that all together is the general theme. So as it relates to identification, I know that Chelsea just touched on some AMI analytics. We are doing EV detection. That's through a partnership with our software vendor CAMUS that's run annually.

We're going to try and do that faster, but it helps get a perspective of where EVs are on the system. We're fortunate in Vermont that we have a regulatory mandate for utilities to reduce carbon through increased electric sales. That means we have a number of incentive offerings, and we maintain a record of where those go. So if someone applies for an EV incentive, we know what type of EV, when they installed it. That means that we can target marketing to those members to enroll them into our programs, which will touch on here in a little bit.

As it relates to investments, we recently—in January of last year—started a free level-two charger program. So far we've sent out over 200 chargers, so 650 EVs on the system. It's been a fairly well-received program. The idea is we provide a free level-two charger if you enroll into our managed charging program. Originally, that was focused on Chargepoint and flow, and we recently transitioned that to Emporia because the chargers are significantly lower cost than what we're getting from Flo and ChargePoint. And ultimately, right, we're trying to reduce the cost of acquisition to get folks into these programs.

We're also fairly unique in the sense that we're doing free distribution transformer upgrades. I'll touch on in a little bit here. We're hopefully trying to get away from that actually by managing the charging. But for now, we don't want to saddle our members with a significant transformer bill. If they go plug in EV and all of a sudden get a $3,500, $4,000 bill that they honestly have no idea about because no one's really paying attention to the transformer KVA, even electricians in many cases.

So we justify that through this tier-three program. Again, these electric vehicles are averaging between 7,000 and 12,000 kilowatt hours a year. It's a fairly significant load. Vermont’s average load is around 6,000 kilowatt hours. So in many cases, it could double the total sales. So there's a lot of incentive for us to get these electric vehicles onto the system as long as they're not impacting the system too much.

So touching on our programs, we have two real EV programs. One is focused on the chargers. We do a monthly $8 bill credit. It's not a rate. There's no stick for charging during on and off-peak times. There's something a bill credit if you do not charge during the peak times. We do four to six dispatches per month that last around four hours, typically between 5 and 9 p.m. and very few opt outs since the program began in 2019. Almost no one opts out of this program generally with the idea that there's plenty of flexibility in the charging to get them charged in the morning.

We recently partnered with FlexCharging to do a telematics program. We have around 60 vehicles currently enrolled that was launched in March. So that's been really well received—really trying to target Tesla there. A lot of those folks generally had chargers that were already free when they purchased the vehicle.

And this is a much lower cost option to us providing a free level-two charger. And it's been really well received so far. In addition, I would also say the FlexCharging data gives us state of charge data. So if we're starting to do some management for infrastructure, we know how much is, how much charge is going to be remaining in the vehicle, how much that vehicle still needs to charge. So that's a key data point that we do not get on the charger side of things.

And I'll touch on this managing for distribution transformer upgrades. That's our pilot that we're running this year. We're very eager to get into the vehicle to grid, vehicle to X space. We would model that very similarly to our existing battery program, which is $6.40 per month per kilowatt. The challenge right now in this space is they're just quite—candidly, aren't any single phase residential bidirectional chargers that are readily available. There are certainly vendors out there working through this, but there's nothing that you can just go purchase today. So as a result, that's been fairly slow.

Jennah touched a little bit on about the value. This is something I get asked about a lot of how do you justify your programs for VC and any utility in the ISO New England region? There's a 13 peak value—so there's a monthly peak that happens. That's the regional network service. And then there's the capacity market ISO New England. There's one of those that one represents close to 30% of the total value. The other 12 represent the remaining 70%. And on—if we look at that on a total per kilowatt basis, we're looking at around $204 per kilowatt per year. We're obviously not perfect, so we de-rate that slightly.

And where that really plays a role is into the program value pie. We try and give at least half to participating members in the program. That's that $8 a month that I've mentioned. The remainder is some software costs because it costs money to access these devices and dispatch these resources. And then the goal is we maximize this remaining portion of the pie.

The idea is that the more that that's, the higher that number is, the more the overall program is saving. And we also want to maintain enough of an incentive to enroll in the program. We often share this with software vendors and get some feedback of, well, you're giving way too much to the participating members. The fact of the matter is, like at 8 bucks a month, that's a decent number. Any lower and think we're going to start seeing folks not interested in less than $100 a year as an example.

So how do we do some of this um, T&D Asset deferral? For us, really, it comes down to starting with this grid data, this foundation that I talked about. We try and integrate as many of those data sets together to provide visibility of what is happening out there. We need to identify where those constraints are and then we can weave in our programs. So that might be the FlexCharging program I talked about. They manage our chargers through Virtual Peaker. We also have battery programs in Tesla. We bring that all together into one location and that enables us to go from what is today's strategy, which is when we see this instance—this is real data from the system. This is someone charging a 19.9kw. This is their real AMI data.

They are drastically overloading that transformer between the hours of 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. We would traditionally go upgrade that transformer. We're doing that for free. So that costs the membership 3 to $5000. We have about 24,000 transformers. More than half are 10 KVA or smaller. So as a result of that, that's a potentially huge risk. So we're really trying to get to is, hey, look, at the end of the day, there is plenty of capacity in the electric system, even at 19kw. And let's say they're really charging their full vehicle. Even at six or seven hours of charging, we can eliminate the need for that distribution transformer upgrade.

At some point, we're going to get there. We're going to need to upgrade that transformer when it fails. But if we can defer that investment, we have lots of investment needs on the system outside of just this particular example. And there's a lot of value in future looking at primary lines and substation overloads with 600 EVs. We're not there yet. There are certainly pockets that are forming as EV penetrations increase, but currently the distribution side is the biggest impact. And then really the region and transmission in Vermont and ISO New England has some of the biggest opportunity for us to potentially save dollars by managing distributed energy resources.

One of the things that we're really considering is like right now today, we currently have a carrot only program that is different than a lot of the other structures. You get a certain credit for participation as we explore rate designs. That's definitely an area that we're looking at, whether that's dynamic rates, whether that's a residential time of use rate. There are folks out there who are not participating in our programs who are adversely impacting the membership at large. So rate structures can be a way to encourage folks to participate in the program instead of just the existing carrot that we have.

And yeah, that's my contact information there. And I will stop sharing. I think next we have John, right?

Sejal Shah: Yes yes.

Bridget Gilmore: Yeah. I'm sorry. My internet crashed during that period of time. I can try to share the screen. But I don't know, Steve, maybe on our team—would you be able to just in case for John slides? Thanks.

John Goroski, Flathead Electric Co-Op: Well, maybe I can—you got it.

Bridget Gilmore: I think we got it. Thank you. Sorry about that.

Steve Lommele: Should be all set. John, you want me to advance the next slide?

John Goroski: Yes would you, please. Thank you. I'm John Goroski. I live up in Northwestern Montana, and I work for Flathead Electric Co-op. Why don't we just go to the next slide, please?

So our cooperative is about 58,000 member owners and 75,500 meters. When I started, we were about 12,000 meters. We acquired Pacific Co-Op, which was an investor-owned utility here in Northwestern Montana. We went to 48,000. So over the last 25 years, we went from being a utility that was a third industrial, a third commercial, third residential to now we're about 60% residential, which has a big impact on our demand that we've seen over the last few years. Our winter peaks around 380. About three years ago, this last year or just January, we were at 442 and that was primarily driven by our residential members.

We go on—some of the pictures there you see is we currently have two and working on our third installation for the community solar. We have a lot of trees in our service territory, so a lot of members can't put solar panels. So by having these community solar projects, our members are now able to have a renewable energy resource.

So let's go to the next slide. Back in 2012, one of my employees, he went out and got himself a 2012 Chevy Volt, and then he started making presentation on the cost savings associated [AUDIO OUT] with a plug-in hybrid vehicle. So I was in a 14 Volt, then we encourage our main office, which was free to the public, some of our linemen got upset that we were getting free power.

So we as the employees agreed to pay a small monthly fee to pay for the energy cost, the power costs associated with that which was still you saved about 80% on just putting fuel to commute to work. Some of the internal questions that we started coming up with, well, should we have a charging network in our service territory?

What about demand response as we are slowly getting bigger and bigger on residential members? How about a time of use rate for EVs? And what is the impact to our distribution system and the transmission system coming into the valley? Because we're serving 100% by Bonneville transmission, and it's got a limited capacity.

Next slide, please. So in 2016, we began really focusing on workplace charging within our service territory. We had another employee that acquired two plug-in hybrids. And so our focus really on workplace charging is that you have a limited amount of distance you can go with a plug-in hybrid. At the time, we didn't see a lot of full battery electric vehicles.

So then we started looking at what were the cost of the EV chargers. Well, in the home it was going to be about $1,000 for the charger plus installing, a 240 outlet in your garage workplace charging. We're looking at about 2,500 and a level three was up to $25,000 at that time. And so then our focus says, well, how about workplace charging? That could help get more EVs into our service territory. And we could also then look at trying to control when that peak happens.

Next slide. So in 2017, what we ended up doing was forming an electric vehicle project. We got employees, members of the communities that were EV owners and non-EV owners. We got together to say, what should we do as far as installing workplace chargers? What criteria should we have so that we could collect data to take a look at it and come back? In the same time, then we ended up purchasing a Chevy Volt to put in our fleet so that our energy services team could use that, and that would allow us to get a better idea to get some hands-on experience for other employees within the co-op to actually see what is involved in having an EV.

Next slide. At the same time, our board was really concerned about—because we've had the charger out front. They started seeing a bunch of EVs plugged there every time they drove by the building. So they were concerned about what impact the EVs would have on our system and then net metering as well. And if we had—we had—at the time had a handful of zero-net energy users. So they had a big enough solar installation on their roofs that they were only paying a basic charge, and they weren't paying for any of the energy costs. So all of our other members were essentially paying for that. And so they really wanted to look at a residential demand rate.

And what we focused on was a time-of-day rate from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then from 5 to 8 p.m. And we didn't really call it a stick as much as, hey, this is just another way that you can save money if you can move your energy outside of those time of day periods. So we put the positive spin on that. Within the electric vehicle realm, we ended up installing two workplace chargers that included a demand response unit in them during those same time of day periods. And then we installed that in the city hall parking structure as well as at a hospital up there in Whitefish. And then, of course, our first employee that upgraded—he upgraded his 2012 Chevy Volt to a Tesla Model 3. So now we're starting to get more experience about a plug-in hybrid versus a full-battery electric vehicle.

Next slide, please. In 2019, our group came together and we developed a loaner program to give our members an EV an experience out there because what you didn't see is you didn't see a lot of electric vehicles sitting on the dealers, lots in our service territory. So we ended up going out leasing a Nissan Leaf.

And so then with the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, we allowed our members to come in and test drive them for three or four days to get that experience. And one of the things it just it answered a lot of questions. We were able to explain how you set the charger within your car so that you're not charging near those time-of-day periods when you're sitting at home. We also then had our first EV day. So save your gas for the grill. And then we allowed members to come in. And then the community showed up in force with Teslas and other electric vehicles.

And so people were giving test drives. Even our other members were giving test drives in their own vehicle. We implemented our residential time of day rate in June of 2019. And this is really starting—it really hit the EV drivers first as far as moving their 11-kilowatt load on their residential use outside of those time periods.

Next slide, please. So in 2020, we ended up installing two more workplace chargers. Again, they included the demand response unit so that we could control load. We didn't see—when we looked at the data—we didn't see a lot of charging occurring in our first, our morning peak period. But we did see quite a bit in the summer from our 5 to 8 p.m. periods. And so we did implement—activate the DRU. But what this DRU did, it did not just shut it off. It took it from charging at 11 kilowatts and it took it down to 1 kilowatt. So the car was still being charged at just that—a lot lower rate.

When we went out, we had other people, motels, stores that wanted to try to get EVs installed at their thing. But we said, we wanted DRU and they said no. If a customer is coming to our place, we want them to be able to have a full charge. And so that weeded out a bunch of other companies from installing workplace chargers. We then expanded the scope of our project team to start looking at level-three charging with the potential VW settlement funding that was coming through the state of Montana. We actually applied for that in 2021. We actually purchased the co-op, purchased a Tesla Model Y, which when we offered the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt, most people wanted the Model Y.

And what happened is we sold so many Model Ys just because the members ended up coming in, driving it and saying, I want one of those. So then they went over to Spokane. [AUDIO OUT] and ordered their car and picked it up over there in Spokane. Funding from the state, but we also found out one of our gas chains in Montana had won awards and other cities. And we said, well, instead of our co-op members paying for this, we turn that award over to them so that they could install one here in the Flathead.

Then another employee within the co-op bought their Tesla Model Y. So we were getting more and more EVs and employees. And it was amazing the number of people that were coming up asking us questions, what is it like to own it? What is the cost of owning [AUDIO OUT] chance at home just to charge at home?

Next slide. In 2022, we ordered a Ford Lightning for our distribution design. And part of this was based on the experience that we had. So we wanted to get some more real-life experience of getting some of the people in the co-op that really weren't big fans of EVS because up here it's very polarized. You got those that love it and those that think it's the worst thing in the world. And so when we come to spend money, we always take that into consideration. So if we can get our members to install charging stations and that's the route we're going to go, we also ordered a Rivian for our EV experience program.

And then, of course, in 2022, I had to go out and get the Model Y. So then we started calling the Chevy Volts. That entry level drug for EV enthusiasts. I still have mine, and I use the Chevy Volt primarily for commuting. And the Model Y again, is like I go across the state to over to North Dakota to see family and go to the family farm. So I enjoy both of those vehicles, but I do love the Chevy Volt. I do love the plug-in hybrid.

In 2023, we started seeing more electric vehicles at our dealerships. And then the other thing we saw is that we were getting a lot of vehicle damage, especially with the Rivian, people were taking it out into the woods and taking it hunting and come back with just a very, very dirty vehicle. And then things were starting to break on it. So at that time, it's like we decided to pull the vehicles off of our EV experience program. And then they're now all fleet vehicles used by our energy services and distribution design employees.

During last year as well, the state of Montana, we passed an annual EV registration fee to capture those commuting miles, pretty much like my Chevy Volt. And then they also passed $0.3 per kilowatt EV tax on all charging stations greater than 25 kilowatts. So those level three type of charging stations to capture those traveling through Montana, visiting through Montana. The one drawback that we ended up having is that all electric utilities in the state of Montana are now tax collectors. So we are working with our members that have level three within our service territory to get metering set up so that we can collect that information and turn it over to our department of transportation.

Next slide, please. And this year we installed—we ended up getting back our gas dealership, decided they did not want to do it. They did not like the demand charge that we were charging them. So then we went back to our state and said yes, we would take the funding for the VW monies and installed two ZEF chargers within our service territory. So in Kalispell and Libby, they are only a 50 kilowatt level-three charger. And so we no longer have a free public charging out front. One of the things we saw upfront when we had free is people would come, they would plug-in and they leave their car there for half a day or a day, which prevented other people from using it. So one of the things we did was set up a rate.

I guess we'll talk about that a little bit that had a dwell charge plus an energy charge. And the reason we did that is so that once their car is fully charged, I mean essentially becomes like an idle fee charge. So Tesla, they'll charge you $1. If the chargers are full, they'll charge you $0.50 a minute. If there's our spots open—so essentially, what we do is we have an hourly rate that's prorated. So if once their car is fully charged, that dwell is now like an idle fee so that they'll come back and move it.

When you're doing a Tesla charger, that's 150, 250 kilowatts, you're essentially going to be there because it's going to charge in 15, 20 minutes. With a 50 kilowatt, it's going to be over an hour to get that same type of a charge. And so worrying about people just taking up those slots and preventing somebody else from charging. The other thing, we work with our members to make sure it's separately metered so we don't have any other energy usage that's coming through the level-three meter because we're going to have to collect $0.03 on that to get back to the state. And we worked now with the Ford dealership just now getting that all up and running here.

Next slide. So when you just take a look at what we have in the state of Montana, if you look out there on PlugShare, one of the things you see is coming from Kalispell, which is up there in the upper-left hand corner, you'll see a bunch of green and the brown dots, which are a level-two, level-three charges. You have to come down to Missoula and then you get on interstate 90.

And a lot of those chargers are your Tesla chargers. So there isn't a lot out there right now for the CCS and CHAdeMO type of chargers. Along the high line, which is Highway 2, you have one up there in Havre. But again, it's just a barren wasteland. So there's no way I could take my Tesla across the top and if I did, I'd have to charge level two, which take four or five hours.

Next slide. So our focus was we have a lot of tourists that come up to Glacier National Park. And one of the things was how do they get there. So they can come from Missoula up. We have level three. We installed this other level three we have so they can get and you'll see a bunch of green level twos that we currently have out there.

And a lot of those are motels, restaurants that want to try to get people to spend their money and stay in their motels at those areas. But one of the things is once they get to Kalispell, it's like I need that extra charge to get to those different areas. The other brown ones you see there in the Flathead area are at the dealership, the Ford, the Nissan dealerships. Flathead owns that other one over there on the very far left side over in Libby. So now people can come through Northern Idaho to get to our service territory and get to where they want to vacation.

And then the next slide was taken from Atlas EV hub. And it just shows that of all the service territory in Montana, we have the most registered EVs. Now, I can't say they all live in the state of in our local service territory. And a lot of what we see is we get people registering their cars that are from California and that. But again, we have the largest concentration of EVs.

We at Flathead Electric going forward are working with—we're seeing a lot more just because of the housing shortage, a lot more apartment buildings going up. So we're working with them to make sure that they have wiring capable of doing EV chargers. We have essentially about 2,000 new residential services a year. So we work with our design folks, work with them to encourage them to install 240 wiring into their garages. And if not for an EV, maybe for a welder or think about selling it—increase the value of your house there.

So that's where we're putting our focus. We don't have specific programs, but we are encouraging our members to think ahead for those in case they want to sell their property in two or three years down the road. Down into the right, you see that we have over 40% of the vehicles within our service territory are Teslas. And part of that was when I bought my Tesla, I went over to Spokane and they gave me a bunch of swag for all of our employees because we were their best salesmen that they have, because—just because of our experience, EV experience and the people just loving the Tesla.

So going forward, we're pulling back. If we need to work with the state, we will to, continue to increase level-three charging. We work with all of our members right now to make sure that they have what they need as far as installing level-two charging, both at the public for a workplace charging and in their house.

And then the final one. Final slide, please. So my contact information. And so those are just little pictures of my Chevy Volt that when we had the ChargePoint charger out front. We went from ChargePoint to ClipperCreek and now we have the ZEF charger out there. That's my Tesla to the left, which is in Helena, Montana, on my way to Wibaux.

And then on the far right there is my hybrid electric truck. And so if you went out to try to buy a Dooley dodge or something to pull, hey, you're looking at $40, $50,000. Well, this little truck was $15,000. And I tell you what, it can pull the hay I want to pull. The batteries—it shuts off. So it's not running continuously, but the batteries are there to keep the AC going inside the cab so I can jump in when it's hot out and have a nice, cool cab. So it's a nice little fun truck. And it gives me just experience to be able to explain the electric vehicles when our members come and talk. So that's all I have. So we're open for questions.

Steve Lommele: Thanks so much, John. That was terrific. That truck that you showed there at the end, is that your personal truck for hauling hay?

John Goroski: That is.

Steve Lommele: Wow. That's fun.

John Goroski: Yeah, and didn't have a picture of my electric bike but, I buy a little electricity from Flathead Electric.

Steve Lommele: Well, you got all modes covered. Wonderful. So, hi, everyone. This is Steve Lommele with the Joint Office. I'm just filling in because Bridget and Sejal are having some connection options or struggles. So we did want to take some questions for the panelists now. So if you do have a question, go ahead and drop that in the chat. But the first one we got was for VEC. I know, John, you showed some stuff that you had from Atlas on registered EVs, but VEC—Cyril, how are you? How did that you have 600 EVs on your grid there locally?

Cyril Brunner: Yeah. I mean, we use the Atlas two, obviously. It's like by zip code, So it's hard to really tell in Vermont GMP covers like a lot of sections of our territory. I'd say we're like fairly confident because you get $600 as a bill credit if you—most folks are going to be interested in an extra 600 bucks that they can get for their EV incentive. So we feel fairly confident that we're close to that and it matches what we saw on EV Atlas. There's likely the biggest challenge is really like second homeowners, folks who might live in Massachusetts and get an incentive there. And then therefore, are not eligible for an incentive here in Vermont, of which we do have some of those folks in that category.

Steve Lommele: Got it. Chelsea, are you doing the same thing to track EVs on the grid there locally?

Chelsea Mead: Yes, very similar. Like I said, we're trying to dive into it to be more precise. But yes, it's the same idea that we use as well.

Steve Lommele: Got it. Jennah, do you find that a lot of rural utilities are familiar with that way to track EVs and growing adoption locally or what's the trend nationally?

Jennah Denney: I'm a firm believer that there's more than one way to skin a cat. So we see co-ops doing a litany of different things to make that identification of EVs occur. Some of it is using that registration data, whether that's zip code or county level, and that varies per state. So you will see some variances there. Some states provide that information readily. Some I've seen have to purchase that data or go through some extreme means to do so or leverage tools like EV Atlas Hub.

We also see co-ops, like Cyril said, mentioning incentives driving that identification—that carrot. So that has been a helpful mechanism through member services that co-ops are leveraging. Some are even disaggregating AMI data to recognize charging behaviors and others are leveraging telematics to do some of that same identification. So you're definitely seeing different levels of that occurring. No right way, no wrong way. But you do get some advantages with some more granular level data. We also have some members such as GRE that are funding EVs to scale initiative, where they're working with some hex8 level data for some commercial.

So data is a huge opportunity and gap at the same time in EV charging and having access to that and clear communication of when some of these projects will occur are pivotal for us at least in the planning processes.

Steve Lommele: Absolutely. Speaking of planning and growth opportunities, we've got a question here probably for all of you. How are you managing new metering installations, particularly for DC fast charging level-three charging with growth and given some of the supply chain challenges that some utilities have faced for utility metering components? Have you had any challenges?

Cyril Brunner: We don't have any level-three charging in our territory yet, so I think that's VEC's perspective.

Steve Lommele: Okay.

John Goroski: I guess what I would say is that during our COVID time, there was a very—a big shortage on a lot of those different components and that. But over the last year or so, we've increased the number of transformers and the meters that we need. So we're in a pretty good position right now. The biggest thing is making sure on those level three, since it's taxed, is to make sure there isn't any additional load. So right now with the VW funding, you had to have a level three and a level two. And so right now what we have are two separately metered chargers so that we're only paying the tax on the level three.

Steve Lommele: Got it. Well, that's good to hear that you're not facing any significant supply chain issues as you work to deploy chargers with on the transformer side or even on the metering side. So I'm glad to hear that has cleaned up a bit. Do any of you all offer technical assistance, support for customers who might be struggling to understand what charging they need or what process they need to go through in order to get a charger? What does technical assistance look like for each of your utilities?

CHELSEA MEAD: You can—I don't mind starting. So in my presentation I mentioned that we had hired our in-house electrician. So he is doing just this. He's completing the EV readiness assessments of our members home. So we are supplying that assistance and really having those conversations with our members about what their charging needs are, the charging capabilities of their vehicle. We go pretty in depth during that assessment.

So that's one of our biggest supports that we're doing. The members who have the Trico-owned chargers installed, we're doing all of the infield maintenance and technical support. So we are serving as a very direct line between the member and ZEF and having that one-on-one support for any technical issues that they may be having in the field. So just a couple of ways that Trico is doing that.

Steve Lommele: Anyone else?

Cyril Brunner: We're fortunate in Vermont. We have a statewide efficiency utility, which actually plays like a really key role in electrification efficiency, Vermont. And so they actually have a drive electric Vermont subcomponent. And their staff, they have like, I think, 5. 6 folks who are basically there to, we'll send folks over that direction, and they'll help with any questions. They also have a very big contractor network. So if you're like really looking to get a charger installed like that's helpful as well.

Steve Lommele: Wonderful. And let's see. You got a question here with respect to level-three charging, what types of rate options have been provided for commercial members? We heard from one of the participants in the webinar or the attendees that there are small utility who does not possess a rate structure for DC fast charging and they're seeing what a challenge it is when it comes to demand billing. Do any of you have—

Jennah Denney: I guess we heard we don't have a lot of DC fast chargers present in here. And that's common. Some of the first ones that are popping up in rural communities or are adjacent have been through the Tesla's superchargers, through the VW program and now some of the later NEVI programs, we anticipate to see more of that activity in there.

But what do we do when they show up? If you ask a—if you ask a Walmart or a GM what they want, it might be a little bit different as they're starting to understand the implications of the demand charges associated with ramping up really quickly, maybe just a couple times a week, a month, whatever that may be. If we're talking about commercial members and fleets, again, co-ops have gotten creative with their CNI customers or commercial and industrial members or their key accounts if they're looking at fleet opportunities and what that mixture of rates and management may look like to manage some of those demand impacts.

When you get into the public space, the public DC fast charging, you're a little limited on what you can do as far as some of the management, especially if they're federally funded and no curtailment opportunities there, making sure that at a minimum standard power is there. We've seen different rate structures, primarily three-part rates going into place with the DC fast charging that makes sure that the demand costs associated with serving that is covered and not spread across the membership unduly. That's taken different flavors from higher customer charges to higher energy chargers with the lower demand and a mixture of those three.

I can't say there's a standard formula for that quite yet. In regards to other creative rate making, we've seen subscription based on fleet and residential as well in different states. We've seen, obviously, we've heard time of use, time of day pricing specific to just EVs and other cases. Again, some of those opportunities get limited with DC fast charging, especially in the public sense.

Steve Lommele: Yeah, follow up question here from an attendee. It's interesting, Jennah, to hear you just talk about the ways that some of the rural co-ops have been able to be flexible. Where do you think you all are ahead of maybe some of the urban areas versus, like, where do your unique capabilities maybe positioned you to take a little bit more risk or explore things differently? So when you think about how you compare to densely populated areas, where do you think you have advantages?

Jennah Denney: Well, I can't speak for one or all of our co-ops and those of advantages because again, we have different flavors of co-ops from regulated to unregulated co-ops that may have different requirements or implications on what they can do in this space.

I think one thing that we have been strategically amazing at for decades is demand response. So I mean, going back to our agricultural loads, that started most of these co-ops. We've learned how to manage these loads and flexible manage to reduce costs for the co-op and the members. Again, that's something that we can recreate. We recreated with the admin of AC. We can recreate again with EV and these new loads. So as we talk about how rural co-ops who are often smaller in nature, are positioned to support this. Again, we have that flexibility and know how to manage these loads and find flexible solutions to support them along the way that are good for the co-op and most importantly, good for the member.

Steve Lommele: Yeah, anything to add from any of the other panelists?

John Goroski: All right. I clicked out there for a minute or so. One of the things is we have a high school that has an electric bus, and so we worked with them. We do have time of use rates. That's all of our members can use. And so we put them on that. And so they were able to charge during that off-peak period. So that saved them money on the gas station.

On the other hand, they needed to provide electricity at a level three level when the car pulled up. And so a time of use rate did not work for them. So what they ended up doing is actually going and putting a battery installation along with their chargers to help shave that peak. And so what we do is flat electric. We try to have consistent rates that apply to everybody. Our residential time of day rate right now from 7 to 10 a.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. right now it's around $3 a kilowatt.

Eventually, we're going to move up into the $5 range. And so when you start plugging a level two at home and put 11-kilowatt on, it starts to turn into real money. And so it's really pretty easy to get in your car to say, hey, I don't want the car to charge during this time. And so charge out outside of that and they're going to save money.

And so that's—we're trying to let our rates do a lot of this to help move our load outside of those peak time periods.

Steve Lommele: Wonderful. Well, I know we're about out of time. I really want to thank you, Jennah, Chelsea, John, and Cyril for joining today. And great to see some good questions coming in from attendees. Just want to highlight some resources that we do have available through the Joint Office and through some of our partners.

So obviously, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association has lots of resources. And we've got the Trico, and VEC links is here as well, as well as Flathead Electric Cooperative. We just released two technical assistance resources on grid constrained electric vehicle, fast charging sites. So how you could potentially use battery buffered charging options to support charging in areas where you may have limited distribution capacity and those are on driveelectric.gov.

And so again, thank you very much to all of our panelists. Really appreciate it. Do want to encourage all of our attendees—if you had a question you didn't get answered, visit driveelectric.gov/contact. You can ask a question, and we'll put you in touch with the technical assistance team and they'll get a response to you. And then we will be following up with the recording to today's webinar. So if you go to driveelectric.gov/subscribe, you can sign up for our newsletter and we'll make sure that you get resources following this webinar. So thank you very much everyone. We're going to wrap now, but hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye.

Chelsea Mead: Thank you.