Unknown: 🎸
Unknown: Thank you.
Unknown: Five seconds, please.
SPEAKER_04: I feel like Mr. Bean. Okay.
SPEAKER_04: Okay. Are we ready? Heidi's online? Perfect. Okay. Ready to go?
Unknown: Okay. Good evening and welcome to the Strategic Development Committee and Special Board Meeting of November 11th.
Unknown: This room is equipped with a safety alarm. If the alarm sounds, please leave in an orderly manner via the exits to the lobby or behind
SPEAKER_04: the dais. Assemble in front of the building and wait to hear their all clear announcement from security
SPEAKER_04: before re-entering. This meeting is being recorded and can be accessed on someone's website.
SPEAKER_04: Please remember to unmute your microphone when speaking in order that our virtual attendees may hear you.
Unknown: The microphone will display a green light indicator when the mic is on. For members of the public
SPEAKER_04: attending in person that wish to speak at this meeting,
SPEAKER_04: please fill out a speaker's request form located on the table outside this room and hand it to SMUD security.
Unknown: Members of the public attending this meeting virtually that wish to provide verbal comments during the committee meeting may do so by using the raise hand feature
SPEAKER_04: in Zoom or pressing star 9.
Unknown: Technical support staff will be able to, will enable the audio for you when your name is announced during the public comment period.
SPEAKER_04: You may also submit written comments by emailing them to publiccomment at smud.org.
Unknown: Written comments will not be read into the record but will be provided to the board electronically and placed into the record of the meeting
SPEAKER_04: if received within two hours after the meeting ends. Chief legal officer, please conduct the roll call.
Unknown: Dr. Sanborn.
Unknown: Here.
Unknown: Dr. Herber.
Unknown: Here.
SPEAKER_04: Chair Buie Thompson.
SPEAKER_06: Present.
SPEAKER_06: All committee members are present. Also present are directors Rose, Kurt, Tamayo and President Fishman.
Unknown: Great. Thank you.
Unknown: Item number one on tonight's agenda is to brief the board on the state of electric transportation industry and also present SMUD's EV strategy.
Unknown: Okay presenters.
SPEAKER_04: Don't, Rachel, you going first?
Unknown: Okay, because on here it says that you're first, but I didn't think that you were. So yeah, I thought that our,
SPEAKER_04: and Drew, will you be going first or Carl?
SPEAKER_05: Okay, great. So we have some great guests both here in person and online.
SPEAKER_04: I will let Drew Higgins
SPEAKER_04: introduce himself. I know him as a great partner at KPMG and he's also the board chair at the Texas Electric
SPEAKER_04: Transportation Resource. If you wanted to give a few words about your background and then hand it over to Carl when you're ready.
SPEAKER_04: Sure, I am honored to be at the most beloved utility in the United States and I say that not as hyperbole from experience.
SPEAKER_13: This is an opportunity for me to share with you
SPEAKER_13: insights from across the United States, my experience with the electric vehicles, from my background
SPEAKER_13: either working at General Motors or working in the utility sector at CPS Energy or with ERCOT.
SPEAKER_13: Hopefully by the end of this
SPEAKER_13: session you'll come away with
SPEAKER_13: insights and even more questions around where
SPEAKER_13: sustainable transportation is going and how it can positively impact your community.
SPEAKER_13: I will hand it over to Carl to give an introduction,
SPEAKER_13: but I do want to emphasize that it is an agreement with the community in terms of how you power your community.
SPEAKER_13: We've seen over the past
Unknown: 20 years
SPEAKER_13: electricity change from just something that turned on lights to something that now powers communication,
SPEAKER_13: environmental control and now transportation.
SPEAKER_13: There's never been a more critical time to get this right and I believe that SMUD is on the right pathway. With that I'll turn it over to Carl.
Unknown: Good evening, everyone.
SPEAKER_07: Carl Poplin, I'm chair of the EV Leadership Council in North America powered by Chartwell, Inc.
Unknown: That's a collaboration of 20 utilities that collectively serve over 65 million people.
SPEAKER_07: Previous to that, I was of the Austin Energy for 17 years.
SPEAKER_07: I'm going to call Austin Energy a sister utility of SMUD, a public power as well. We'll focus on the city that we serve.
Unknown: There,
SPEAKER_07: the last
SPEAKER_07: 12 years of that 17 was the founder and leader of electric vehicles and emerging technologies.
SPEAKER_07: Today my goal is to share some best practices from utilities,
SPEAKER_07: from member utilities that include Austin Energy as well as other utilities across North America.
SPEAKER_07: I also did a recent snap poll with our members on some specific questions to address for today
SPEAKER_07: as well as share some of the
SPEAKER_07: 2025
SPEAKER_07: utility EV program benchmark study powered by Chartwell and it's a very pleasure to be here with y'all tonight.
Unknown: And so the agenda here is
SPEAKER_07: we're going to have Andrew kick it off. Andrew's just a great
SPEAKER_07: big picture guy. I did collaborate with Drew when I was at Austin Energy at CPS.
SPEAKER_07: He's also going to be closing with really talking about why it's important in the community benefits.
SPEAKER_07: So I think Andrew is really going to be talking about the big picture, why it's important, what's shifted in the landscape,
SPEAKER_07: as well as some interesting use case and financials.
SPEAKER_07: I'll be going over a little more of the nuts and bolts. The three main things I'm going to tackle is
SPEAKER_07: a recent study and survey on how leading utilities are organized
SPEAKER_07: in utility EV programs because I think that's the foundation for everything. If you don't have the foundation,
SPEAKER_07: you're not going to have anything else as far as the outcomes I think community or board desires.
SPEAKER_07: I'm going to do a little deeper dive in public EV charging, the landscape there and highlight one of our council members,
SPEAKER_07: Orangen Rockland, as a case study. And I also did want to highlight what PSEG Long Island is doing in understanding your customers.
SPEAKER_07: And specifically I cherry picked two
SPEAKER_07: journey mapping exercises they did as a good template to kind of better frame and ultimately better serve
SPEAKER_07: your customers. Next slide, please. And we'll turn it over to Drew.
Unknown: Motors, I was in charge of
SPEAKER_13: monetizing data from vehicles,
SPEAKER_13: making sure that they could essentially connect to the grid effectively that there was actually a pathway for growth
SPEAKER_13: for sustainable transportation. And I went to the utility to kind of fix the other side of that.
SPEAKER_13: And the first thing I will tell you is in the short time I transitioned, I saw we went from
SPEAKER_13: forecasting
SPEAKER_13: load and dispatching generation
SPEAKER_13: to dispatching generation and forecasting load. And what I mean by that is we went from
SPEAKER_13: looking at how much, how cold it was outside and
SPEAKER_13: figuring out how many gas turbines we fire up in order to meet that need to looking at how much sun
SPEAKER_13: would shine and figure out how much DR we need to call that day in order to meet kind of that requirement,
SPEAKER_13: how much demand response. That fundamental shift in the way that utilities manage
SPEAKER_13: both load and generation is going to shape what we do into the future.
SPEAKER_13: It's never been more clear to me that SMUD has a handle on this. However,
SPEAKER_13: there are going to be some, we'll call it subtle nuances that
SPEAKER_13: reflect choices by both consumers and choices decision makers making this room
SPEAKER_13: that will impact kind of the future of that. So when we look at
SPEAKER_13: the direction of where we're going, we're going into an environment where renewables are the primary source of
SPEAKER_13: generation and battery storage is going to be critical to
SPEAKER_13: making sure that the future is powered and that
SPEAKER_13: sustainable transportation and specifically electric transportation is going to be the
SPEAKER_13: glue that's going to bind that all. We're going to lower
SPEAKER_13: costs for all consumers by having vehicles charge off peak and potentially be able to discharge when we do have critical peak loads.
SPEAKER_13: This is a game-changing shift.
SPEAKER_13: It's something we all need to get a hold of and I know everyone in this room knows that but I can't reiterate it enough.
Unknown: So here we're just talking about
SPEAKER_07: what are consumers thinking about buying an EV charging?
SPEAKER_07: We still see the top three. I've seen this shift a little bit. Some of the recent polling has cost is number one,
SPEAKER_07: but the top three always remain the same.
SPEAKER_07: It's the concern about how they're going to charge, the concern about range of the vehicles and concern the overall cost.
SPEAKER_07: I really think utilities can play a role in addressing a lot of these barriers and we're going to talk about those
SPEAKER_07: coming up next. So next slide, please.
SPEAKER_07: So how are innovative utilities addressing barriers? At the EV console,
SPEAKER_07: we started off with 12 and then we tightened it up to 10 lanes.
SPEAKER_07: We think a holistic approach really involves all the 10 areas you see on screen today.
SPEAKER_07: There's a lot of synergy. I think if a utility stays too narrowly focused on just a few of the areas
SPEAKER_07: they're missing out of the synergies,
SPEAKER_07: just being that role is trusted advisor, fleet electrification, infrastructure,
SPEAKER_07: grid integration and so on. Today, I'm going to focus a little bit more on infrastructure
SPEAKER_07: than maybe some of the other areas, but we can really talk about anything and everything we want to.
SPEAKER_07: I guess this is also the time is, we have time at the end for questions, but feel free to. We're fine with being interrupted at any time.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide, please.
Unknown: So going through the agenda, I really want to talk about the foundation of any good program. So next slide.
Unknown: That is your people.
Unknown: So this is from the recent EV benchmark survey by Chartwell just to show kind of the sizes
SPEAKER_07: of utilities. We did break this down into
SPEAKER_07: those utilities serving less than a million customers and more than a million customers. We had 41 utilities participate in the survey.
SPEAKER_07: So it just kind of gets you a sense of full time and both on contractors and employees
SPEAKER_07: as well as FT is not fully dedicated.
SPEAKER_07: And in the future, in a slide moving forward, I'm going to talk about these as functions.
SPEAKER_07: What are the functions by the core team and what are the functions
SPEAKER_07: that can be part of an ecosystem working and collaborating with that team? Next slide.
SPEAKER_07: One thing I have found though
Unknown: is that
SPEAKER_07: utilities with high outcomes, they typically have a centralized organized maturity.
SPEAKER_07: And so even more important than the number of people, it is that
SPEAKER_07: go-to team and focus that sees the process all the way through.
SPEAKER_07: And so when I talk utilities and before launching the EV Council over two years ago, I interviewed over 50 utilities.
SPEAKER_07: So I started getting some themes, if you will. And what I quickly found at ad hoc or even assembly line, assembly line being
SPEAKER_07: this team does this part of the program and then they might pass it over to communications and they might pass it over to an operational team, etc.
Unknown: Just don't have the same results as a very solid internally and externally well-known centralized team.
SPEAKER_07: It's really what I saw is that the major correlation in driving results,
SPEAKER_07: possibly one of the key indicators for sure. Next slide.
SPEAKER_07: And we can go to the next slide. I'm still showing that.
SPEAKER_07: Sorry about that, Carl. I'm going to pause here for one second just to re-emphasize one,
SPEAKER_13: especially after the Marine Corps birthday yesterday and Veterans Day today. So thank you for all veterans for being here.
Unknown: But you need a throat to choke, right?
SPEAKER_13: You need someone who you can blame and hold accountable for hitting the goals that are necessary that are set by the community, right?
SPEAKER_13: Whether it's a total volume of vehicles on the road, a total KWH that's being charged by vehicles.
SPEAKER_13: You need to be able to set these ambitious goals, give the resources to the right people, set commanders intent, and then let them go.
SPEAKER_13: And this is a simple slide, right? But focus on that centralized, right?
SPEAKER_13: That one person, that one executive leader that can say, these are the decisions that I'm going to make based upon a hypothesis and then I'm going to go and execute on it.
Unknown: Without that, there's an old quote in Alice in Wonderland and it's the Cheshire Cat.
SPEAKER_13: And the Cheshire Cat, Alice says, you know, which road do I take?
SPEAKER_13: And the Cheshire Cat says, where are you going?
SPEAKER_13: Alice says, I don't know. And he said, well, any road will get you there, right?
SPEAKER_13: So without that centralized leadership, you won't have an ability to decide where you want to go.
SPEAKER_13: And that is probably one of the most beautiful slides I've ever seen, right?
SPEAKER_13: It seems like innate, but really, this is what you want to look at.
SPEAKER_13: If you really want results, you need to have a leader.
SPEAKER_13: You need to have someone who can you can point to and you can set a goal to.
SPEAKER_13: I'm sorry, Carl. Back to you.
Unknown: No, perfect. Thank you.
SPEAKER_07: I also appreciate the slide. So you're seeing the my ability to put together a slide is pretty limited.
SPEAKER_07: That is the slide I just put together.
Unknown: So as one of the case studies, I'll use a council member, but also a team I was heavily involved with at Austin Energy.
SPEAKER_07: It's just so, you know, someone I know the most since I co-founded and led this team for 11 years.
SPEAKER_07: And fun fact, in top left hand corner, you see Lisa Martin there, who is now the COO of Austin Energy.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
Unknown: So really anything that Austin Energy was done because of that team.
Unknown: But, you know, then you have to think of what's the functions.
Unknown: So when I was really kind of reflecting on what is the core functions of the team and the main points of contact,
Unknown: I mean, on the council, we have one man bands and we have teams up to 65 focused on e-mobility.
SPEAKER_07: So that's kind of the range, but it all breaks down to this.
SPEAKER_07: And so really, as teams grow, they might take some of the functions on the right.
SPEAKER_07: They might move it over to the left or they're just more in scale and more programs.
SPEAKER_07: It's kind of what it was.
SPEAKER_07: But if I were to pick on any one key function is you need to go to kind of Drew's point, a quarterback,
SPEAKER_07: someone that's well known internally and externally, as I know I need to go to this person if I'm even talking about EVs
SPEAKER_07: so then they can kind of funnel and bring together the right folks.
SPEAKER_07: And that's why I see some of our council members have some huge outcomes of even one person shows like Ammon, Missouri,
SPEAKER_07: is a one person show for the most part.
SPEAKER_07: And that's because they have a person named Becky who everyone knows and she's really able to play that role.
SPEAKER_07: And as the team grows, you start ensuring the strategy operations of project management.
SPEAKER_07: Typically, we have project management, two types to build the project management for infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: That's EVSE, electric vehicle service equipment, as well as fleet electrification project managers,
SPEAKER_07: and then an outreach team and product development.
Unknown: But you cannot underestimate the named points of contact, just not functions that are loose.
SPEAKER_07: But we knew we had key people in each one of the areas you show on the right by name,
Unknown: and they kind of became part of the team internally.
SPEAKER_07: We called them friends of the show and we'd invite them to lunch and our parties and everything else
SPEAKER_07: where they almost felt like they were part of our core team.
SPEAKER_07: Other fun fact, legal at that time for many years was a city attorney called Stuart Riley,
SPEAKER_07: who is now the general manager of Austin Energy.
Unknown: So I guess I'm also saying anecdotally, if you want to be executive at electric utility,
SPEAKER_07: work with your EV programs.
SPEAKER_07: But all these functions come together to really kind of push that outcomes.
SPEAKER_07: So next slide.
Unknown: And a utility does very little on its own in this space of electric vehicles.
SPEAKER_07: So this is just a list of cultivating an EV ecosystem.
SPEAKER_07: And these just aren't people who are working on these.
SPEAKER_07: Every single bullet you see here meant active relationships,
SPEAKER_07: weekly or monthly meetings, members of the team and I would be members of their board, collaboration.
SPEAKER_07: There was just a lot of work.
SPEAKER_07: So I would also say what moves a community forward in transportation and electrification
SPEAKER_07: is working with an ecosystem.
SPEAKER_07: And as a utility and as a trusted advisor as that utility,
SPEAKER_07: you have a real opportunity to be that center stone or cornerstone of an ecosystem like this.
SPEAKER_07: And next slide.
Unknown: And let's next agenda.
SPEAKER_07: So now that we've talked about the foundation,
SPEAKER_07: and I generally talk about organizational work for any utility.
SPEAKER_07: I have not assessed this much specifically or anything like that.
SPEAKER_07: I just always want to set a foundation.
SPEAKER_07: If you want outcomes, and before I talk about outcomes,
SPEAKER_07: I talk about the foundation of getting the outcomes you want.
SPEAKER_07: But let's shift to EV charging.
Unknown: Next slide.
Unknown: So from a big picture, I first like to set the tone.
SPEAKER_07: We're going to talk about public charging.
SPEAKER_07: But public charging is really only about 20% of all charging.
SPEAKER_07: In Austin 2020, it was 84% split.
SPEAKER_07: National polling shows around an 80-20, so it's still pretty close.
SPEAKER_07: Because at the end of the day, providing public charging,
SPEAKER_07: you're competing with home charging for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_07: And multifamily is a different subset of a program to give them home charging.
SPEAKER_07: But it's really about cost, convenience, and then
Unknown: customers enjoy the cost and convenience of charging at home.
Unknown: Charging at home is much cheaper than DC fast charging.
Unknown: And also infrastructure overhaul naturally
SPEAKER_07: has not kept pace with the rapid increase of EV adoption.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
Unknown: So and let's go to the next slide.
Unknown: I want to talk about right sizing versus faster is better.
Unknown: A lot in the industry like to push faster is better.
SPEAKER_07: It's better than level two is level three.
SPEAKER_07: It's better than a 100KW level three is a 300KW to three.
SPEAKER_07: And there's a lot of momentum for faster, better.
SPEAKER_07: And I could argue that case if resources were unlimited,
SPEAKER_07: if cost was unlimited and power was unlimited,
SPEAKER_07: there wasn't a cost associated faster is better.
SPEAKER_07: But I think we as utility people can do better.
Unknown: I think it's more about right sizing.
Unknown: And so when you look at the 80% charging is the first two.
SPEAKER_07: Level one and level two.
SPEAKER_07: In Austin, that 80% of all charging have half of it just happens in a wall outlet.
SPEAKER_07: You know what we fancily call level one.
SPEAKER_07: So in that perspective, if someone asks, well, how many charging stations,
SPEAKER_07: EV charging stations do you have in Austin?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, the count would probably be 100 million or so or 50 million
SPEAKER_07: because every outlet you just look around the room you're in is a potential.
SPEAKER_07: If you can plug in a hairdryer, you can plug in a TV.
SPEAKER_07: And then there's level two, which is very popular with home charging as well.
SPEAKER_07: And that just gets you a lot more range per hour.
SPEAKER_07: And then there's a DC pass, but huge jumps in cost as you go up.
SPEAKER_07: So I would say as a utility, we always look at what is it you want to do?
SPEAKER_07: How many miles you drive a day?
SPEAKER_07: What is the use case?
SPEAKER_07: And let's right size the solution versus going to a faster is better mentality,
SPEAKER_07: which a lot of the industry, especially out of utilities go to.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
Unknown: So what are utilities doing and what is that role?
SPEAKER_07: There isn't one size fit all is what this slide is showing here.
SPEAKER_07: So when we pull those 41 utilities is 56 of utilities about half.
SPEAKER_07: Only just just do what they normally do.
SPEAKER_07: Their obligation to serve, just provide electricity and that's it.
SPEAKER_07: You're just a provider of electricity and that's okay.
SPEAKER_07: That is fine.
SPEAKER_07: But I think there's a lot more use cases and business opportunities to do more.
SPEAKER_07: So if you look at the radio on the right, you see some utilities,
SPEAKER_07: provider, operator, owner and site house, some cherry pick a few difference of those
SPEAKER_07: at awesome energy, we were everything and above to get to the rollout and the outcomes we wanted.
Unknown: But that isn't necessarily the right for every utility or for every community.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
Unknown: And I want to break that down just a little bit more is about half utilities,
SPEAKER_07: they provide the electricity, of course, but also some sort of incentive for the
SPEAKER_07: charging infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: Another half the utilities, do the electricity and an E.B. advisory service.
SPEAKER_07: E.B. advisory services, some of the best bang for your buck,
SPEAKER_07: especially for commercial charging and fleet charging, because then the day they want a
SPEAKER_07: better understanding how charging works and have that partner to help them get into the implementation
SPEAKER_07: phase.
Unknown: And I also want to kind of make note about I see this number growing year over year.
SPEAKER_07: The 30% utilities offer Make Ready program.
SPEAKER_07: Make Ready is providing a lot of the infrastructure all the way up to the charging station and
SPEAKER_07: removing that cost and uncertainty to your customer.
SPEAKER_07: Very popular with fleet, fleet owner operators.
SPEAKER_07: And I'm seeing a lot of momentum.
SPEAKER_07: I know some utilities who have offered Make Ready programs and it gets fully booked within
SPEAKER_07: weeks, gets fully subscribed.
SPEAKER_07: So it is very popular to move the needle and fleet electrification.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
Unknown: And so at the end of the day, one thing is we want to drive as utilities drive a positive
SPEAKER_07: customer experience.
Unknown: And it's not rocket science what customers expect.
Unknown: They want it convenient.
SPEAKER_07: They want it affordable.
SPEAKER_07: And when they pull up, they want the spot available and they want it working.
SPEAKER_07: It's really that easy at a fundamental.
SPEAKER_07: You can get into more nuances as amenities, lighting and all those other things.
SPEAKER_07: But at the core, those are kind of the three things.
SPEAKER_07: So how are utilities doing that?
SPEAKER_07: Most utilities are helping provide that through terms and conditions and rebates and incentives.
Unknown: And in the terms and conditions, they will mandate consistent signage.
Unknown: They might mandate branding to include utility branding, mandate parking enforcement.
SPEAKER_07: So if you're like a grocery store parking lot, you will also put a toe way sign underneath
SPEAKER_07: it to make sure that it's once again customer expectation.
SPEAKER_07: It's available and it's not being iced out.
SPEAKER_07: Ice is a term used when an internal combustion engine is parked in a DV space.
SPEAKER_07: Also generally require an operational commitment.
SPEAKER_07: Five years is pretty popular.
SPEAKER_07: If you accept this incentive, you promise to operate it for at least five years.
SPEAKER_07: And another interesting way is what are the accepted payment methods?
Unknown: I think there's frustration and fear of people don't want four or five apps and four or five
SPEAKER_07: bobs just because of what station is doing what.
Unknown: And I do have a quote, a little mini use case, a quote from a snap poll I did on some language
SPEAKER_07: on accepted payment method, which is going to be in the next slide.
SPEAKER_07: But the utilities that own and operate, you can also help drive a puzzle with the pricing.
Unknown: Three, you know, three types of pricing models are volume, time like a per minute charge volume
SPEAKER_07: is KWH and then fix all you can drink at Austin energy.
SPEAKER_07: We did all three.
SPEAKER_07: We did had a we had a fixed for 23 a month program, also a $30 home and away on 360.
SPEAKER_07: We did minutes on DC fast as well as then then we moved to the line metric.
SPEAKER_07: And, you know, that might be a deeper discussion.
SPEAKER_07: We can talk about those also with service levels.
SPEAKER_07: With both your charging infrastructure service provider as well as support electricians.
SPEAKER_07: Also, you have a lot more control over to put the locations.
SPEAKER_07: So citing is very important.
SPEAKER_07: We had about 10 criteria we looked at before we put a charging and you want multiple use cases
SPEAKER_07: to get the usage.
SPEAKER_07: It's very important to I feel sorry for operators that are just doing like a corridor traffic,
SPEAKER_07: you know, between this city and this city.
SPEAKER_07: And this is where people are going to charge.
SPEAKER_07: Those are historically way underutilized.
SPEAKER_07: What we saw if we want to get the high utilization, we can do corridor traffic.
SPEAKER_07: But we also wanted to site with a multifamily to capture that market.
Unknown: Also look at gig economy drivers, typically gig economy drivers like entertainment,
SPEAKER_07: logistics and airports.
SPEAKER_07: That's pretty easy to figure out as well.
SPEAKER_07: And there's just other, you know, and then safety and amenities and just a layer of things you
SPEAKER_07: look at to do smart siting of that infrastructure.
Unknown: And then aggregators is kind of an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_07: When I did the Snap poll, the console, no one came back and said we're using a third-party
SPEAKER_07: aggregator.
SPEAKER_07: They're all doing something on the top line there as well.
SPEAKER_07: We kind of did a little bit of awesome energy.
SPEAKER_07: One is we standardized on charge points.
SPEAKER_07: We had a consistent experience there.
SPEAKER_07: There's pros and cons to doing that as well as used a plugin, a smart plugin,
SPEAKER_07: I can't pick a widget like on our website that would show all the infrastructure in the area.
SPEAKER_07: So, you know, there's some loose aggregators out there.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if there's a real winner yet, but that is something I haven't really done
SPEAKER_07: a deep dive into.
SPEAKER_07: No one from the council was doing that.
SPEAKER_07: Something I just haven't heard a lot of in the public charging space.
SPEAKER_07: There's aggregators doing telemetry for the EVs to understand driver behavior and other
SPEAKER_07: aggregators.
Unknown: But I would still say that is kind of an ongoing opportunity for private industry to do.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
Unknown: And so I just wanted to put this quote just kind of in response to the snap hole I did
SPEAKER_07: asking about third-party aggregators and customer experience.
SPEAKER_07: So, PSG Long Island are using universal forms of payment.
SPEAKER_07: So, they mandate if you take the incentive in addition to your FOB and your app and everything
SPEAKER_07: else you want to do, your charging station if you want an incentive has to either accept
SPEAKER_07: a credit card reader or tap to pay a QR code that directly goes to the payment site, not
SPEAKER_07: to redirect you to the app or even calling a toll-free number just as a way to once again
SPEAKER_07: standardizing using what the customer uses today and not have them sign up for one more
SPEAKER_07: app or multiple apps.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
SPEAKER_07: Here's a dashboard I want to show of Orange and Rockland.
SPEAKER_07: I think they have some of the best dashboarding I've seen in any utility of their programs.
SPEAKER_07: We've done deep dives at the Council of their dashboarding and KPIs and portal.
SPEAKER_07: It really is some great work.
SPEAKER_07: So, thanks to the Orange and Rockland folks there.
SPEAKER_07: I'm going to share just a little bit.
SPEAKER_07: One is just kind of showing their outcomes and they do have, they clearly have that
SPEAKER_07: quarterback role, a very strong team as well.
SPEAKER_07: They're about almost a 30-person team now, but they're really hitting it out in the
SPEAKER_07: part of the metrics.
SPEAKER_07: When you look at Orange and Rockland and the rest of their peer utilities in the area,
SPEAKER_07: they're really hitting out of the part, but how are they doing that?
SPEAKER_07: Let's go to the next slide.
Unknown: One of the ways they're doing that I think is often overlooked is how long it takes to
SPEAKER_07: deploy infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: And keep in mind, they are doing everything through incentives.
SPEAKER_07: They're not owner and operators.
SPEAKER_07: They are encouraging the ecosystem and private industry and third-party charging providers
Unknown: to come into their market to get the outcomes they want.
Unknown: When they started this journey in 2022, it took 600 days working with the third party
Unknown: to get to the deployment of infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: Within two years, they dropped it down to 240 days.
SPEAKER_07: The last check-in, it's down to 180 days and still shrinking.
SPEAKER_07: So, if you are going to really utilities just aren't known at moving at a subsonic pace
SPEAKER_07: in this type of project management.
SPEAKER_07: We're generally used to construction of buildings.
SPEAKER_07: That's just a much smaller process, but a lot of our process is associated with buildings
SPEAKER_07: as opposed to charging infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: I just really want to commend them of how they shrunk that down.
SPEAKER_07: That is a whole 40-minute deep dive that we've done with Oregon Rockland or how they did that
SPEAKER_07: secret sauce.
Unknown: But I would just say, if you're going on this journey, assess how long it's taking
SPEAKER_07: and look at best practices to shrink that down into much more reasonable.
SPEAKER_07: Then the project managers and deployment providers of this infrastructure just have
SPEAKER_07: rave reviews of working with Oregon Rockland.
SPEAKER_07: They're very high customer set.
SPEAKER_07: A big part of that is them being so vigilant and driving down this time to push through
SPEAKER_07: projects and ultimately get infrastructure deployed in their territory that their customers
SPEAKER_07: can use.
Unknown: Next slide.
Unknown: Here's another dashboard.
SPEAKER_07: Oregon Rockland did reply to my snap poll as well.
SPEAKER_07: I think that's an important strategy that you talk about.
SPEAKER_07: They incentivize between 20 to 60% of total cost installed chargers with a guiding principle,
SPEAKER_07: pay as little as possible to get the job done ultimately to maximize rate, payer value.
SPEAKER_07: Here's another one of their dashboards.
SPEAKER_07: I do really like how they look at their metrics and go through it.
SPEAKER_07: You can look at how they're looking at safety, operational excellence, and customer service.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
SPEAKER_07: Then last, I just want to highlight what PSEG Long Island is doing.
SPEAKER_07: So this is why they did customer journey mapping.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
SPEAKER_07: We did an exercise where we looked at, they did 14 of these.
SPEAKER_07: I just cherry picked two.
SPEAKER_07: I'm not really going to go through this with you, but other than
SPEAKER_07: it's a great way to make sure you understand the characteristics,
SPEAKER_07: interests, goals, and needs, and frustrations and concerns of your customers.
SPEAKER_07: And then the specific demographic.
SPEAKER_07: It's not one size needs all.
SPEAKER_07: So for this talk today, I picked out what a local charting developer installer is.
SPEAKER_07: So you can have that as a reference.
SPEAKER_07: And next slide.
Unknown: The journey mapping portfolio of someone who wants to buy an EV.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
Unknown: And then Andrew.
Unknown: Yeah, thanks, Carl.
SPEAKER_13: Just four minutes, Scott gave me the evil eye.
SPEAKER_13: And it was when you were mentioning the FTEs that would be required.
SPEAKER_13: And I totally get it, right?
SPEAKER_13: O&M expenses are incredible.
SPEAKER_13: And we know that they have a real tangible bill impact.
Unknown: And I think everyone in this room is cognizant of those bill impacts.
SPEAKER_13: But there is a good story around the bill impact when it comes to EVs.
Unknown: When you look at the community, you think of the community as a functioning organism.
Unknown: If you have a hole in that organism that's constantly bleeding
SPEAKER_13: and it's not being replenished with sustenance, it will starve to death.
Unknown: And one of those ways that communities are kind of bled out
SPEAKER_13: is through the overuse of things like petroleum.
Unknown: And I'm just going to say it, right?
Unknown: It's one of those things that comes into your community and it just takes value out.
Unknown: And there's not, unless you live in, like, Houston, right,
SPEAKER_13: where you're the beneficiary of carbon-based fuels or Louisiana,
SPEAKER_13: then there's not necessarily a community benefit.
SPEAKER_13: It doesn't make the environment better.
SPEAKER_13: In fact, it makes it worse.
SPEAKER_13: It increases asthma rates.
SPEAKER_13: It subjects the community to the whims of global pricing.
SPEAKER_13: One of the beautiful things about a utility is stable pricing.
Unknown: The benefit returns to the community when you use it.
Unknown: It's clean.
Unknown: Those dollars that are spent on fueling an EV
Unknown: versus fueling a petroleum vehicle return to the environment.
Unknown: If you look at this chart, what you'll notice is,
Unknown: on one side, you have one gallon of gas, and on the other side,
SPEAKER_13: you have the equivalent of that energy in electrons that fill up a battery, right?
SPEAKER_13: When you look at the return on investment for that, for your community,
Unknown: you see that EVs, as a whole, are overly beneficial to the community.
Unknown: This is one of those where times where you can say,
SPEAKER_13: look, by us making more money, we're actually helping the environment.
Unknown: Those dollars that are spent fueling that EV
SPEAKER_13: go to pay for the salary of linemen.
Unknown: They go to pay for better infrastructure, higher resiliency.
Unknown: There is not that many opportunities to have what I consider a sea change in the overall
SPEAKER_13: structure of an economy, of an environment, than right now with sustainable transportation.
Unknown: This is a bragging point.
Unknown: If a community that has responded with a 97% customer satisfaction rate
Unknown: can't trust their utility that they love more than ExxonMobil, then what are we doing?
Unknown: This is an opportunity.
Unknown: This is a gravity-inducing moment, right?
Unknown: And it takes investment.
Unknown: It takes investment because, like most investments,
SPEAKER_13: there's some risk, but like most investments, there's generally a good return.
Unknown: I do want to pause just for a second and ask if there's any questions up to this point.
SPEAKER_13: We want engagement.
SPEAKER_13: Carl and I, we get a little weird sometimes when no one says anything.
SPEAKER_05: Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your presentation and thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_01: What I think about as you're laying out the plan and proposal that other areas did,
SPEAKER_01: who pays for this?
SPEAKER_01: I know you said 20 to 40% could be subsidized, I'm guessing, by the utility.
SPEAKER_01: But is there money to be made from charging electric vehicles?
SPEAKER_13: Yes.
SPEAKER_13: We have another slide for that and we'll get to that.
SPEAKER_13: The short answer is yes.
SPEAKER_13: When you look at EV charging, when do your customers normally charge their EVs?
Unknown: At home at night.
SPEAKER_13: When you look at the relative cost of electricity,
SPEAKER_13: if you look at a stabilized cost, you have a flat rate.
SPEAKER_13: We'll just call it for the sake of argument.
SPEAKER_13: Let's just call it 10 cents per KWH.
SPEAKER_13: But the true cost at night when you have greater supply, it's cheaper.
SPEAKER_13: It's really five or six cents at night while in the day it's actually 15 or 16 cents.
Unknown: Because you have this volumetric benefit at night when most people charge,
SPEAKER_13: they're actually lowering the cost for all your other customers.
SPEAKER_07: I'm sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_07: No, go ahead, Carl.
Unknown: I was going to say, how we look at it, Austin Energy, is this.
Unknown: Is we knew every EV that came into our territory met $400 a year of new revenue to the utility.
Unknown: And we looked at those barriers early.
SPEAKER_07: People aren't buying because they don't see that infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: Some of this best marketing can do is have charging stations out and about.
SPEAKER_07: People see it at the workplace and see it there.
SPEAKER_07: And that gets them thinking.
SPEAKER_07: But we know in aggregate, we know what 1,000 EVs will do.
SPEAKER_07: 1,000 EVs, 80% will be at home.
SPEAKER_07: And to Drew's point, a lot of that charging happens overnight.
SPEAKER_07: So in the Texas ERCOT market, the electricity can actually get down to zero because of over
SPEAKER_07: capacity of wind and ERCOT.
SPEAKER_07: And so that's just spice on a rib.
SPEAKER_07: That is a lot of value back to the utility.
SPEAKER_07: And you're leveraging existing infrastructure and costs.
SPEAKER_07: Individual charging posts, it's hard to make money in this business.
SPEAKER_07: It's not like this flow of cash.
SPEAKER_07: Your DC fast isn't going to be flooding with your cash.
SPEAKER_07: We look at it as a market leadership position to overcome barriers, to get people to buy
SPEAKER_07: the EVs, to remove the excuses.
SPEAKER_07: And they realize very quickly, public charging is much more important to someone before they
SPEAKER_07: buy their vehicle than two weeks after they buy it.
SPEAKER_07: Because then they figure out, oh, it's just like my cell phone.
SPEAKER_07: I just go home, I plug in my cell phone, and I plug in my car.
SPEAKER_07: I don't think about it.
SPEAKER_07: And that's all just new revenue to the utility.
SPEAKER_07: So it can be quite profitable if you look at it holistic.
SPEAKER_07: But if you look at an individual post, that's much harder.
SPEAKER_07: But that's what we did Austin Energy.
SPEAKER_07: We always looked at the adoption.
SPEAKER_07: And so even though we were about 5% of the population, we were 25%, 35% of the EVs in
SPEAKER_07: Texas.
SPEAKER_07: So we're definitely doing things to attract EV drivers.
SPEAKER_07: And that really helped on a lot of our goals.
SPEAKER_07: To include net zero, I know you all have carbon zero goals.
SPEAKER_07: In Austin, we have net zero goals.
SPEAKER_07: To also help larger community goals, get the NOx emissions out of the air,
SPEAKER_07: to go ahead and do all these other goals we have as a community.
SPEAKER_13: Exactly.
SPEAKER_13: And just to add on to that, if you look at a simple calculus, every DC fast charging port
SPEAKER_13: you add will allow for 100 new EVs by just market accessibility, right?
SPEAKER_13: Just someone saying, OK, I think I can own an EV.
Unknown: If you look at it as 100 new EVs in the year that you put in that port,
SPEAKER_13: gives you a pretty good calculation on what the benefit will be.
Unknown: And now with the cost of DC fast charging, this dropping precipitously.
SPEAKER_13: Just to give you an example, three years ago, a Tesla supercharger for one port was around
Unknown: $75,000 to put in total cost for that one port.
Unknown: For electrify America, $250,000.
SPEAKER_13: We've seen the prices drop now for a Tesla port.
SPEAKER_13: It's somewhere around 24K, fully installed for that one port.
SPEAKER_13: Electrify America, somewhere around $36,000, $37,000.
SPEAKER_13: Through the use of innovative technologies, specifically by making these sleds,
SPEAKER_13: these prefab cement installs, they can put them in quickly with existing infrastructure.
SPEAKER_13: And they also have batteries to allow them to go in without necessarily impacting
SPEAKER_13: excessive demand charges.
SPEAKER_13: So the cost kind of reciprocate on themselves, right?
SPEAKER_13: The cheaper it gets, the easier it is to put them in, the more benefits you get from the community.
SPEAKER_13: But it does take some awareness on the part of the utility to say,
SPEAKER_13: I know this looks negative up front, but we're going to kind of watch this and measure this
SPEAKER_13: to see the benefit.
SPEAKER_13: Carl can speak to it because of the group that he's in.
SPEAKER_13: The benefits, it's panned out, right?
SPEAKER_13: The numbers kind of prove out on their own.
Unknown: Carl?
Unknown: Oh, I think that's it.
SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
Unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_13: I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but essentially,
SPEAKER_13: it's pretty easy to see from the community's perspective.
SPEAKER_13: EVs are just better economically.
SPEAKER_13: So not only, right, by having an EV, are you powering the community?
SPEAKER_13: Are you putting money back into the community?
SPEAKER_13: But also, you have the opportunity to reduce emissions.
SPEAKER_13: One person I have on my board at the Texas Electric Vehicle Association is a pulmonologist, right?
SPEAKER_13: They can see clearly the correlation between asthma rates and emissions.
SPEAKER_13: When you look at environments, especially low-income environments, you'll see cars that are past what
SPEAKER_13: we would consider the zero sum of their kind of emission-controlling equipment on the vehicle.
SPEAKER_13: Basically, your tailpipe, your mufflers, the things that are supposed to limit emissions,
SPEAKER_13: as well as the combustion cycle of the engine kind of deteriorates, those vehicles put out more
SPEAKER_13: asthma-causing emissions than new cars.
Unknown: And so you have this disproportionate impact in low-income areas.
SPEAKER_13: Because those cars are older, they're not as good of condition.
SPEAKER_13: And then you get subsequent asthma rates, which cause other hardships from both on the medical
SPEAKER_13: and financial side.
SPEAKER_13: And so you get this reverberating kind of impact of negativity from gasoline-powered cars.
SPEAKER_13: You don't get that from electric cars.
SPEAKER_13: You don't get that from electric drivetrains.
SPEAKER_13: And so on top of the potential cost savings, you have emission savings and a health impact
SPEAKER_13: that is very, very tangible.
SPEAKER_13: And it's something, as community stewards, that we have to look at seriously.
SPEAKER_13: By not supporting electric transportation, it's like we're ignoring the negative impact
SPEAKER_13: and the negative consequences that these vehicle emissions have on low-income communities.
Unknown: Okay, so that's Carl's dog, so I have no right whatsoever.
SPEAKER_13: Correct.
Unknown: I just started putting my dog in all my presentations, including every month when
SPEAKER_07: we meet in the console.
SPEAKER_07: And I do a new picture every time, so I think that starts to become the highlight what's
SPEAKER_07: Tilly up to.
SPEAKER_07: So this is, I have a cabin in Arkansas.
SPEAKER_07: It's a camp, and this is the beach in front of it.
SPEAKER_07: And notice, Tilly is observing safety first with an orange life jacket.
SPEAKER_07: But that concludes our presentation.
SPEAKER_07: Obviously, we'll open to any other questions, but also be differential to the agenda at
SPEAKER_07: time as well.
Unknown: Any questions?
Unknown: Greg?
Unknown: It's great to see that so many people are charging at home, because obviously that is
Unknown: easier, cheaper to install.
SPEAKER_10: My wife and I just leased an EV, and we don't even have a charger yet.
SPEAKER_10: We're just plugging into an outlet.
SPEAKER_10: And over the weekend, that does what we needed to do.
SPEAKER_10: The hardest nut for that, though, to crack is still the multifamily.
SPEAKER_10: And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_10: How are you approaching multifamily charging for residential?
SPEAKER_10: I'll start off.
SPEAKER_10: Thank you for that question.
SPEAKER_10: Well, can I at least ask you to go to the next slide, please?
Unknown: Back up slide.
SPEAKER_07: Next slide.
SPEAKER_07: Pass next.
SPEAKER_07: That's our next one.
SPEAKER_07: I think multifamily is very important.
Unknown: In Austin, it's 50% of our housing stock is multifamily.
Unknown: According to AI, it's about a third in some of our housing stock.
SPEAKER_07: And I think that's a good question.
SPEAKER_07: And so what we learned is a few things.
SPEAKER_07: One is understand the market site multifamily is a pretty big number, but you need different
SPEAKER_07: utility programs if it's apartment managed, because they look at it as an amenity.
SPEAKER_07: If it's a homeowner's association, they look about how to associate costs.
Unknown: So that's more of a kind of legal definition, which we work at in Austin.
SPEAKER_07: And then either the type.
SPEAKER_07: Is this a luxury student or affordable?
SPEAKER_07: And a core driver is a company that's a company that's a company that's a company
SPEAKER_07: that's affordable.
Unknown: And a core driver is it's much easier, more effective to do the infrastructure
SPEAKER_07: and multifamily during construction than retrofit.
SPEAKER_07: So if you go to the next slide, and I'll just quickly blast this just so you,
SPEAKER_07: I think it's a great question.
SPEAKER_07: And then let me turn over you.
SPEAKER_07: But at Austin, energy is I really like the idea of tiers of EV readiness.
SPEAKER_07: Some people just think it has to be infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: And that's what EV ready means.
SPEAKER_07: It's EV capable, EV ready, and then there's an actual space.
SPEAKER_07: So those are different tiers as a different way to make it easier to install.
SPEAKER_07: But this is all during the construction phase.
SPEAKER_07: And then so there's a lot of data, a lot of deep dive.
SPEAKER_07: I could pair y'all with Austin energy on this.
SPEAKER_07: I think they've done some great work.
SPEAKER_07: They work very closely with the Austin building codes to do this,
SPEAKER_07: along with a formalized program called green building at the utility.
SPEAKER_07: And then next slide.
Unknown: And then another thing is, so you've talked about multifamily.
SPEAKER_07: And then here's some of the requirements of having it,
SPEAKER_07: one of those different tiers of readiness.
SPEAKER_07: So something to think about.
SPEAKER_07: And let's go to the next slide.
Unknown: And so here's a case study on fourth and west,
Unknown: where they as an amenity, as a new luxury amenity for condos,
SPEAKER_07: they were doing 40% electric, but they ended up,
SPEAKER_07: they got such good market feedback.
SPEAKER_07: A big reason I'm buying here is because of the CV infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: They went from 40% to 100%.
SPEAKER_07: So there's also market drivers for it.
SPEAKER_07: So I guess the big picture is, how do you address it?
SPEAKER_07: Is one, is your public charging a big part of your siting should be,
SPEAKER_07: are you also servicing this radius of public charging,
SPEAKER_07: but also how you can impact building codes to make it
SPEAKER_07: both put infrastructure under construction or at the very least the conduits of other things.
SPEAKER_07: That's much more expensive to retrofit.
SPEAKER_07: So that's a very high level.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's a, that's a much probably larger conversation,
SPEAKER_07: but a high level, those are some of the key things I'd look at.
SPEAKER_07: Andrew, you had a comment on that?
Unknown: Yeah. So I'm going to start with like the foundational things.
SPEAKER_13: And you hit an important point, which is pre-construction
SPEAKER_13: is already always better than post-construction.
SPEAKER_13: Right. So when you look at the cost of putting in an EMA 1450 plug,
SPEAKER_13: after you built the home, this is a regular residential home,
SPEAKER_13: you're looking at anywhere from 700 to 1200 dollars.
Unknown: You do it pre-construction, it's about 60 dollars.
Unknown: Right. That's a huge, huge impact.
SPEAKER_13: So one of the things that we were able to do in San Antonio will be put into the building codes.
SPEAKER_13: You have to, if you have a garage, you have to put in a NEMA 1450 plug.
SPEAKER_13: Period. Point blank.
SPEAKER_13: Doesn't have to be an EV charger.
SPEAKER_13: You can use it for whatever you want.
SPEAKER_13: You can put in a deep freeze.
SPEAKER_13: You know, you can put in, I don't know, a cement mixing machine.
SPEAKER_13: We don't care.
SPEAKER_13: But one thing's going to be for sure is that home will never have to go
SPEAKER_13: and basically do some type of retrofit to be ready for EV.
SPEAKER_13: So that's at a very fundamental residential level.
SPEAKER_13: If you go out towards the airport in Sacramento, there's a ton of new homes being built.
SPEAKER_13: Right. This is a great opportunity to get way ahead of that and make sure
SPEAKER_13: that all those homes are EV ready from the jump.
SPEAKER_13: Now, multi-unit is not currently solved because, and this is very critical,
SPEAKER_13: it is a very, very, very, very like specific community driven issue.
SPEAKER_13: One of the things that happened to me in San Antonio is I had multiple
SPEAKER_13: building condo associations come and say, look, we want to put in an EV charger.
SPEAKER_13: We would put together a package for them and they'd look at the price and say,
SPEAKER_13: we're not doing that.
Unknown: Just point blank.
Unknown: We can't afford it.
SPEAKER_13: We're not going to do it.
Unknown: And so the San Antonio community had a different perspective,
SPEAKER_13: which is they thought that CPS energy should have borne the cost of that.
SPEAKER_13: And theoretically, looking back at it, we probably could have penciled it out.
Unknown: But that's just not how the community is structured.
SPEAKER_13: Right.
Unknown: And so you have to have a solution that is kind of geared
Unknown: based upon the needs of the community.
SPEAKER_13: Go ahead, Carl.
Unknown: I'd say my biggest takeaways were for property managed apartments.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, we hired someone with no utility experience to lead this program, Bobby.
SPEAKER_07: They had 20 years of property management, hotel management experience.
SPEAKER_07: And what we found there is about amenities.
SPEAKER_07: So once we got 20 to 30 properties signed up,
SPEAKER_07: put infrastructure, we created a logo with EV ready and we kind of ran it in adverts
SPEAKER_07: and that we gave them this signage to use.
SPEAKER_07: Then we're literally getting calls from properties across the street to say,
SPEAKER_07: oh, how can I get on this?
SPEAKER_07: Property apartments are very amenity driven.
SPEAKER_07: If you have a pool, I need a pool.
SPEAKER_07: If you have a gym, I have a gym.
SPEAKER_07: You have EV charging.
SPEAKER_07: So we saw a domino effect, but you have to be very aggressive.
SPEAKER_07: We were in 80% rebate to get that first 20 to 30 properties over the finish line,
SPEAKER_07: but then it domino affected and then we were able to scale back and roll it in.
Unknown: With HOAs, it's all about assigning costs and what we did.
SPEAKER_07: So I was a multifamily HOA president for seven years
SPEAKER_07: while I was the manager of electric vehicles, emerging technology, and Austin energy.
SPEAKER_07: And it was still very hard to figure it out.
SPEAKER_07: And what we ended up doing was a legal definition of electricity to legally allow
SPEAKER_07: the owner to plug in on maybe a garage down here,
SPEAKER_07: even though their meter may be way up there and to create an agreement
SPEAKER_07: that we found acceptable for the city of Austin, Austin energy
SPEAKER_07: for them to appropriately cost share that.
SPEAKER_07: So you weren't running some ridiculous conduits just because where their meter was.
SPEAKER_07: So with HOAs, it was more about helping them legally construct
SPEAKER_07: a completely cost recovery system for the HOA
SPEAKER_07: because they don't want one extra penny to go to this owner that doesn't go to them.
SPEAKER_07: That's how HOAs work.
Unknown: And with apartments, it was amenity driven.
Unknown: But a bigger picture is go ahead and drive the cost down now
SPEAKER_07: and get into your local building codes and city codes as well.
SPEAKER_07: And we've seen a lot of evolving and lead happen with that.
SPEAKER_07: Lead used to give a generic innovation point.
SPEAKER_07: And that's how people got EVs, but now there's all kinds of language
SPEAKER_07: and all kinds of information in there to go ahead and be a lot more prescriptive
SPEAKER_07: than just a generic innovation point.
SPEAKER_07: So we're seeing a lot more information in there.
Unknown: Yeah. And so I want to make sure I answer your question.
SPEAKER_13: So it's going to be community dependent.
SPEAKER_13: However, there are things that SMUD can do to encourage multi-unit dwellings to adopt.
SPEAKER_13: So one is to show them the cost benefit analysis.
SPEAKER_13: If you look back at what used to be an amenity of the laundry room,
SPEAKER_13: if you look at the cost of a laundry room compared to the cost of EV charging,
SPEAKER_13: it doesn't even like this is not even a close in terms of return on investment.
SPEAKER_13: You get a huge return on investment for EV charging,
SPEAKER_13: whereas your laundry room is a continuous call center
SPEAKER_13: that is never going to pay off for you.
SPEAKER_13: The second thing is you have to give them options in terms of off-street charging.
SPEAKER_13: If you look, San Diego Gas and Electric put in a great program where they have
SPEAKER_13: slightly off-street charging with a plug that is provided by the utility.
SPEAKER_13: This is similar to the way they do it in Europe.
SPEAKER_13: It's charged at a rate that is not zero, right?
SPEAKER_13: It's not a net neutral.
SPEAKER_13: There is a revenue generation aspect to it because it's San Diego Gas and Electric
SPEAKER_13: and they want to charge for everything, which is fine, right?
SPEAKER_13: You're offering something and there's a benefit.
SPEAKER_13: But those all enable multi-unit dwelling customers to be able to operate effectively
SPEAKER_13: and EV and transition out of a carbon-based fuel vehicle.
Unknown: Next question.
Unknown: Anybody have any other questions?
SPEAKER_04: They'll hang out.
SPEAKER_04: Does anybody?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we can go.
Unknown: I just wanted to see if you had a few thoughts on vehicle grid integration
SPEAKER_12: and very specifically to actual infrastructure solutions,
SPEAKER_12: right?
SPEAKER_12: Because everybody says it's easy to say, but it seems to be very difficult to actually do.
SPEAKER_13: So I actually spoke for the California PUC.
SPEAKER_13: Me and Quinn Nakamura had a whole session where we were basically educating
SPEAKER_13: on what the opportunities were for vehicle to grid.
Unknown: Listen, OEMs are not on your side on this one.
SPEAKER_13: And that's vehicle OEMs.
SPEAKER_13: I'm just going to be blunt with you.
SPEAKER_13: The enablement of utilizing your battery to do anything other than drive those wheels
SPEAKER_13: is a risk to their warranty, which is a risk to their bottom line.
Unknown: They're getting over it because of customer demand.
SPEAKER_13: Customers want this as a feature.
SPEAKER_13: They want it.
SPEAKER_13: And it's starting slowly.
SPEAKER_13: So it's the simple things where you have V to X where you plug into your port
SPEAKER_13: and you can plug in a pot of coffee when you go camping.
SPEAKER_13: There is not a long kind of leap from that to powering your home.
SPEAKER_13: In fact, there is no leap.
SPEAKER_13: It's the same darn thing.
Unknown: And so because customers are demanding it, it's going to be there.
SPEAKER_13: Now, from a utilities perspective and someone who selfishly,
Unknown: I ran a very large demand response program in Texas, 270 megawatts.
SPEAKER_13: Very proud of it.
SPEAKER_13: Fantastic program.
SPEAKER_13: Save my customers millions of dollars a year.
SPEAKER_13: I want every last kilowatt to be able to use.
SPEAKER_13: If I can mitigate for CP, our four coincidence peaks,
SPEAKER_13: or I can mitigate any type of generation issue, why not do it?
SPEAKER_13: It helps the community.
Unknown: It's available.
SPEAKER_13: And if you can pay your customers back for it, they're going to participate.
SPEAKER_13: So the first thing is capabilities.
SPEAKER_13: The capabilities will be there.
SPEAKER_13: I say anywhere from two to five years.
SPEAKER_13: If you talk to Len Ames from General Motors,
SPEAKER_13: and I definitely can make that connection for you.
SPEAKER_13: The foundational infrastructure exists already.
SPEAKER_13: Right?
Unknown: One, you can do it right now.
SPEAKER_13: Educating the community and how they do it, that's a different thing.
SPEAKER_13: And then putting together the program so that you can fairly and faithfully execute it
SPEAKER_13: when you need it is a different question.
SPEAKER_13: It's more of an engineering and operational question
SPEAKER_13: than it is like an engineering and physics question.
SPEAKER_13: So yes, it's real.
SPEAKER_13: Yes, you can do it.
SPEAKER_13: No, we haven't done it yet, but I think we will.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, my thought on that is it's definitely real.
SPEAKER_07: The technical aspects have proven out.
SPEAKER_07: We rolled out quite a few projects, both in demand response.
SPEAKER_07: So V1X as well as 2-way, V2X.
SPEAKER_07: So V2X is part of our Austin Shines.
SPEAKER_07: And we used a Nissan Leaf to do 10KW bidirectional charging.
SPEAKER_07: And that worked technically.
SPEAKER_07: It worked very well as part of a microgrid called Austin Shines Project,
SPEAKER_07: which I was the principal investigator on.
Unknown: So technically, it does work.
Unknown: It's really about the numbers.
SPEAKER_07: You are seeing some OEMs kind of leading with their skis, embracing it.
SPEAKER_07: If you look at when the Ford F-150 Lightning was first advertised,
SPEAKER_07: especially in Texas market, you know, fear of the grid going out,
SPEAKER_07: they went all in and used your truck as a generator.
SPEAKER_07: And now this imagery, if you went to the Ford F-150 Lightning homepage,
SPEAKER_07: the very first amendment they showed was this husband and wife picking up branches,
SPEAKER_07: everything, all the other houses were dark,
SPEAKER_07: but their home was lit up like a Christmas tree
SPEAKER_07: because they had the Ford F-150 plugged into the home.
SPEAKER_07: So from a big perspective, I'd look once again, what's the outcome?
SPEAKER_07: I think you can get 80.
SPEAKER_07: There's a utility, you can get 80% of the value at 20% of the cost in demand response.
SPEAKER_07: So V1G.
SPEAKER_07: What we found when we did several pilots with open ADR,
SPEAKER_07: and that standard has evolved, it's actually pretty healthy right now.
SPEAKER_07: We were doing open ADR 1.0, and then it became 2.0
SPEAKER_07: as a way to curtail demand response.
SPEAKER_07: And we found out this is our customers were much more willing to curb their EV charging,
SPEAKER_07: as long as the vehicle is ready in the morning, we had zero opt-outs in our test pilot.
SPEAKER_07: With air conditioning, we would get opt-outs.
SPEAKER_07: People get one degree warm, they don't care it's gone,
SPEAKER_07: they're just going to turn it down and that signals back the utility and opt-out.
SPEAKER_07: We had 0.0% opt-outs for our EV drivers.
SPEAKER_07: So I'd say there's more elasticity or more willingness
Unknown: for EV drivers to shift your load as long as the vehicle's ready
SPEAKER_07: than our traditional demand response program.
SPEAKER_07: So that's air conditioning in Texas.
SPEAKER_07: And so I think there is a lot of opportunity there,
SPEAKER_07: but I would say it's important to once again, understand the use case,
SPEAKER_07: what the outcome, what is the value, can demand response get you there?
SPEAKER_07: And really, instead V2G, I'm seeing more VTX or VTH, vehicle to home,
SPEAKER_07: as being kind of the market leader for the consumers,
SPEAKER_07: how can I use my vehicle as a generator?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, put in perspective, a Ford F-150 Lightning is the equivalency
SPEAKER_07: of 10 Tesla powerwalls.
Unknown: And you already bought that, it's in there, it's 120, 130 KWH battery pack.
Unknown: And if you can tap into that, that is a much more cost-effective
SPEAKER_07: than buying 10 Tesla powerwalls, that's all they do.
SPEAKER_07: And so I think backup generators, especially in the Texas market,
SPEAKER_07: was pretty compelling for people wanting to go that route.
Unknown: And just to add on that, some of the headwinds for V2G
SPEAKER_13: is the falling price of battery packs.
SPEAKER_13: They fell 50% last year, they'll fall 50% again this year.
SPEAKER_13: They're just getting really, really cheap, which is good for utilities, right?
SPEAKER_13: So utility scale storage, still not where it probably needs to be,
SPEAKER_13: but residential storage is getting really, really affordable.
SPEAKER_13: That is a headwind, but it's still...
SPEAKER_13: It's still an opportunity if you engage with customers in the appropriate way.
SPEAKER_13: At the end of the day, it's a customer choice issue,
SPEAKER_13: but it's there, it's available.
Unknown: These vehicles are still expensive, and as long as they're expensive,
SPEAKER_13: you're going to find that customers want to get the max value out of them.
SPEAKER_13: So if you give them an opportunity or program, they're going to take it.
Unknown: Heidi, did you have a question?
Unknown: I did, thank you.
SPEAKER_15: Thank you.
Unknown: Yeah, this is a great conversation.
SPEAKER_15: We've talked about EV charging every single year, I think.
SPEAKER_15: And I still, as an EV driver myself, feeling like we're not doing enough.
SPEAKER_15: And one of the things I didn't see in your key factors,
Unknown: I didn't see mentioned was safety.
SPEAKER_15: I know for me, as a woman at night, I am not going into a dark parking lot
SPEAKER_15: by myself that doesn't have eyes on it and there's no convenience or there's no
SPEAKER_15: eyes, there's no people there to charge my car.
SPEAKER_15: And I noticed that, you know, we're charging our car in the rain
SPEAKER_15: and every other gas pump I see is under cover.
Unknown: And I just feel like this whole infrastructure is not evolving to be customer friendly
Unknown: in a way that we're going to get people to spend the kind of money
SPEAKER_15: they need to spend on these cars and have a good experience.
SPEAKER_15: So do you want to speak to that at all?
SPEAKER_15: Like why aren't we doing convenience stations with the charging?
SPEAKER_15: Or are there any cities that have required that gas stations also include charging stations
SPEAKER_15: and that they call them fueling stations?
SPEAKER_15: Or it just seems like we're missing opportunities to encourage more people to change TVs?
Unknown: Yeah, I think that's an excellent point.
SPEAKER_07: We had 10, about 10 siting criteria.
SPEAKER_07: So safety was a big part of that and amenities, lighting, a 20 minute amenity like coffee, etc.
SPEAKER_07: We also did deploy eD charging at gas stations.
SPEAKER_07: There's a gas station outside of Austin Airport, which we deployed in there
SPEAKER_07: in the same kind of coverage and amenity.
SPEAKER_07: You're also getting announcements from some of the big gas stations.
SPEAKER_07: They're wanting to roll it out nationally.
SPEAKER_07: We didn't mandate it specifically for gas stations, but that's all part of, you know,
SPEAKER_07: one of my previous slides I looked at siting.
SPEAKER_07: And so siting is about, I focus more on usage.
SPEAKER_07: The use case, you know, multifamily gig economy drivers, etc.
SPEAKER_07: But really the list is about 10 and safety, amenities, security,
SPEAKER_07: all that stuff is all part of good site host development.
SPEAKER_07: I'm sorry, Drew, did you want to add to that?
Unknown: No, I mean, you nailed it, right?
SPEAKER_13: Fundamentally, the reason why it's so bad is because a company that purpose put like
SPEAKER_13: the mass market EV chargers thought that, you know, no part was the best part, right?
SPEAKER_13: And so you had this really simplistic, minimalistic kind of execution of EV charging.
SPEAKER_13: That's not really what customers want.
SPEAKER_13: But now we've seen new market entrance.
SPEAKER_13: If you look at like what I own is doing, they have not only is it well lit,
SPEAKER_13: not only is there generally security or at least some type of camera system,
SPEAKER_13: but there are facilities for snacks, there's facilities to go to the restroom.
SPEAKER_13: There's trash cans, for goodness sakes.
Unknown: It is evolving.
SPEAKER_13: Unfortunately, like I said, the beginning of this thing was like this minimalistic experience,
SPEAKER_13: which was great for early adopters, but it's not going to get the,
SPEAKER_13: you know, the middle movers to where they need to be.
SPEAKER_13: And so to answer your question, standards can be set by the community, but also like inviting the
SPEAKER_13: I owners of the world into your market and making sure you have an induced environment to them
SPEAKER_13: building their facilities here, you'll find that the customer experience is through the roof.
SPEAKER_13: And in fact, significantly better than what you find at everything but a Bucky's, right?
SPEAKER_13: We have our limits.
SPEAKER_13: Bucky's, you're not going to be Bucky's, but other than Bucky's,
SPEAKER_13: this is about as good as the experience can get with Iona.
SPEAKER_07: Definitely not to beat Bucky's.
SPEAKER_07: And I'm also a big fan of charging hubs, 1632 plus chargers and a location servicing a slightly
SPEAKER_07: larger area than onesies and twosies.
SPEAKER_07: Onesies and twosies have single points of failure and they're kind of maybe parked
SPEAKER_07: in this kind of weird area and whatnot.
SPEAKER_07: And so that's another thing to consider when you're deploying infrastructure is how clustered
SPEAKER_07: you are with your infrastructure.
SPEAKER_07: Because that can also help with hitting the customer expectations.
Unknown: Well, for, I mean, I'm glad we all agree because I've noticed some new chargers coming into my
SPEAKER_15: jurisdiction, but in my district, but they're just in the front of parking lots.
SPEAKER_15: They're not covered.
SPEAKER_15: There's, you have to walk.
Unknown: There's some unhoused people hanging around.
SPEAKER_15: But it just doesn't feel like this is where we're going to get the middle of America to
SPEAKER_15: start adopting EVs.
SPEAKER_15: And we're going to max out.
SPEAKER_15: We're going to hit our ceiling about who's going to switch over until we make this more
Unknown: amenitized, I guess.
SPEAKER_15: It needs some amenities.
SPEAKER_15: So thank you for this discussion.
SPEAKER_15: I greatly appreciate it.
SPEAKER_13: It's our pleasure.
SPEAKER_13: And like, you know, we've seen organizations like EDTA and ATE come in and try to encourage
SPEAKER_13: these standards and these growth, the growth of facilities and amenities.
SPEAKER_13: And we are seeing it.
SPEAKER_13: I will tell you, if you go to other countries, you see a vastly different experience, both in terms
SPEAKER_13: of expectations as well as implementation.
SPEAKER_13: That is coming, but it's going to be at the demand of customers.
Unknown: And part of those customers include kind of influences from the city of Sacramento,
SPEAKER_13: SMUD, local community partners.
SPEAKER_13: It's not okay to have like a dimly lit EV charges in an environment where there's lots of shadows
SPEAKER_13: and there's no type of security.
SPEAKER_13: That is not something we should allow.
SPEAKER_13: And I shouldn't have to go buy a piece of pie that I didn't want just so I can use the restroom
SPEAKER_15: while my car is charging.
SPEAKER_15: And that's basically what's happening now because we just don't have, we're out in the middle of
SPEAKER_15: nowhere, very exposed and feeling kind of alone and a little scared sometimes, at least for me.
SPEAKER_15: So thank you again, again, a really good discussion, but we need to get
SPEAKER_15: up the game in order to get more people to switch over.
Unknown: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
Unknown: Great.
Unknown: I will save my questions till after our SMUD presentation, but if Carl and Drew, if you can
SPEAKER_04: hang about, we will loop back around.
SPEAKER_04: But if Carl, you do have to leave.
SPEAKER_04: And Drew, I did want to take a moment today is Veterans Day and I asked personally these
SPEAKER_04: two gentlemen to come and they are both veterans.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you for your service in the army and taking your day here to be with us.
SPEAKER_04: And you traveled yesterday and we'll travel tomorrow.
SPEAKER_04: And I know Carl the same.
SPEAKER_04: So in case you have to zip off, I did want to thank you for coming today and thank you for serving.
Unknown: Oh, thank you.
Unknown: Yes.
Unknown: I think Rachel, are you up next?
Unknown: So up next is Rachel Huang.
SPEAKER_04: She's the director of Distributed Energy Solutions who will present what we're doing
SPEAKER_04: at SMUD and what we plan to do in our Strategic Directors.
SPEAKER_04: Great.
SPEAKER_14: Thank you, Director Boogie Thompson.
SPEAKER_14: Yes, Rachel Huang, director of Distributed Energy Solutions.
SPEAKER_14: So just before I start, I just want to mention that in September I came and talked to you about
SPEAKER_14: our zero carbon plan progress.
SPEAKER_14: So I talked a lot about the tactics about our progress and what we're looking ahead in the
SPEAKER_14: next year.
SPEAKER_14: So today is really going to be about the strategy.
SPEAKER_14: But one thing that we weren't able to talk about in September that has since changed
SPEAKER_14: is the expiration of the federal tax credit.
SPEAKER_14: So I wanted to really talk about our strategy and emphasize some of the things that we're
SPEAKER_14: doing, especially in light of a lot of the federal pullback.
Unknown: First, just to start, and I don't need to repeat this, I know Drew and Carl both talked about
SPEAKER_14: like why are we doing EVs and the benefits of EVs?
SPEAKER_14: In our service territory, it helps air quality.
SPEAKER_14: You know, cars, vehicles are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, cause
Unknown: air quality issues.
SPEAKER_14: And so those are definitely things that we have.
Unknown: The key is that not only does it benefit us as a utility from a beneficial load growth
SPEAKER_14: and revenue standpoint, so we are looking at 4,700 gigawatt hours of new load and 1.07
SPEAKER_14: billion gross revenue for just 2025 to 2030 from EV charging alone.
SPEAKER_14: But from a customer perspective, it's really got value for them as well.
SPEAKER_14: And as Drew mentioned, really can be reinvested back into the community, because that value
SPEAKER_14: is here in the Sacramento community.
SPEAKER_14: Where looking at the total cost of ownership, EVs can reduce annual household transportation
SPEAKER_14: bill burden by $2,000, which is a total savings across all of our EV drivers of what we expect
SPEAKER_14: from an adoption standpoint of $575 million per year.
SPEAKER_14: So it's pretty significant not only for us, but for our customers as well.
SPEAKER_14: And as we just talked about vehicle grid integration, that really can help us as we think about
SPEAKER_14: achieving our zero carbon plan goals, both from a keeping rates low as well as helping
SPEAKER_14: support decarbonization and increased use of renewables.
SPEAKER_14: But we are facing some headwinds.
SPEAKER_14: I won't go through all of these, but this is really the list as you look at both the
SPEAKER_14: light duty side as well as the medium and heavy duty side of a number of the Federal
SPEAKER_14: policies and also kind of implications from a statewide standpoint that have been impacted
SPEAKER_14: by the Federal pullback.
SPEAKER_14: So we did lose the $7,500 new and 4,000 used EV Federal tax credit that ended at the end
SPEAKER_14: of September.
SPEAKER_14: There was also a commercial EV tax credit that ended in September as well.
SPEAKER_14: We see things like advanced clean cars, which was really about the auto OEMs and 100% EV
SPEAKER_14: sales that was repealed by Congress.
SPEAKER_14: And then we've got HOV lane access ending.
SPEAKER_14: And then as we looked at medium and heavy duty, we had advanced clean trucks, which
SPEAKER_14: was that OEM sales requirement repealed.
SPEAKER_14: And then consequently, we had CARB pulling back on the advanced clean fleet.
SPEAKER_14: So lots of activity from a policy standpoint, not only at the Federal level, but implications
SPEAKER_14: at the statewide level that are frankly going to create some headwinds.
SPEAKER_14: So what does that mean?
SPEAKER_14: And it's still pretty early.
SPEAKER_14: So we've been looking at like, hey, what are some studies that are doing with regards to
SPEAKER_14: predictions of what adoption is going to look like given the Federal pullback?
SPEAKER_14: This slide is actually from the repeat project, which is a joint project of the Princeton
SPEAKER_14: University Zero Carbon Energy Systems Research and Optimization Laboratory and Evolved Energy
SPEAKER_14: Research.
SPEAKER_14: They actually published this analysis.
SPEAKER_14: And it finds that the termination of the vehicle tax credit, as well as the manufacturing tax
SPEAKER_14: credit, which is really, really key in the repeal of the IRA, will cause about a 40%
SPEAKER_14: decrease in light duty vehicle sales in the US by 2030.
SPEAKER_14: So this is a US perspective.
SPEAKER_14: This is not a California perspective.
SPEAKER_14: We have not been able to find, we haven't seen any published analysis of California yet.
SPEAKER_14: But really, this is just to kind of say, hey, this is going to have implications with regards
SPEAKER_14: to slowdown.
SPEAKER_14: As much as we would like to think, hey, California, we've got very supportive policies, also how
SPEAKER_14: we think about where the state will be in terms of continuing to support EVs, while
SPEAKER_14: we do believe that we, and we have strategies that I'll talk about shortly, of continuing
SPEAKER_14: to drive towards the outcomes that we want from a transportation decarbonization standpoint,
SPEAKER_14: there is implications of this federal pullback.
SPEAKER_14: The next slide really talks about also implications about the state of the medium and heavy duty
SPEAKER_14: market.
SPEAKER_14: With all of those policy changes, we do expect to see implications as well.
SPEAKER_14: We're also seeing the industry react.
SPEAKER_14: So the automakers actually sued to withdraw from the 2023 California Clean Truck Partnership.
SPEAKER_14: That partnership had basically had the OEMs committing to CARB that they would stay true
SPEAKER_14: to the terms of the advanced clean trucks, regardless of where federal policy might change.
SPEAKER_14: So that is some action that we're seeing on the OEMs part that's pulling back, given some
SPEAKER_14: of the federal pullback as well.
SPEAKER_14: We do have some remaining funding mechanisms that are supporting medium and heavy duty.
SPEAKER_14: The low carbon fuel standard credit, clean fuel rewards, sorry, LCFS, CFR, lots of acronyms.
SPEAKER_14: As you recall, the Clean Fuel Rewards Program was supporting light duty vehicles for cash-on-the-hood
SPEAKER_14: incentives actually in the change and update with regards to LCFS regulations.
SPEAKER_14: They are actually moving to supporting medium and heavy duty.
SPEAKER_14: So that's going to be an opportunity.
SPEAKER_14: California does still operate the HVIC program, so the Clean Bus and Truck Vouchers, that provide
SPEAKER_14: incentives to private and public fleets to purchase EVs.
SPEAKER_14: And apparently that actually had quite some very popular subscription too in its latest
SPEAKER_14: release.
Unknown: But, again, the reality is that some of this policy pullback is also going to have implications
SPEAKER_14: in the medium and heavy duty market.
SPEAKER_14: And really what we're seeing, and I think we're going to see this both for light duty
SPEAKER_14: and for medium and heavy duty, is that as we look at, you know, a lot of the activity
SPEAKER_14: has been driven by grants and tax credits and subsidies, that we're really going to
SPEAKER_14: be looking towards structural cost reductions and looking at total cost of ownership as
SPEAKER_14: really kind of the factors that are going to drive adoption, both on the light duty
SPEAKER_14: side and particularly on the medium and heavy duty side.
SPEAKER_14: And from an optimism standpoint, actually this infographic to the right shows that,
SPEAKER_14: you know, RMI is showing that there are reasons to believe that electric trucks are approaching
SPEAKER_14: cost parity to diesel trucks in that late 2020s, early 2030s timeframe.
SPEAKER_14: So again, expect some slowdown, but it's not, you know, not all hope is lost and not all
SPEAKER_14: funding is gone.
SPEAKER_14: We just have to be a lot more strategic and more focused in the work that we do.
Unknown: So, thanks.
Unknown: Well, just real quick, because it's close to my day job, right?
SPEAKER_12: The HVIP program basically was full within a couple days and the wait list was left open
SPEAKER_12: for another couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_12: But you're talking about $200 or $300 million worth of vouchers.
SPEAKER_12: So there's really still market interest and this is heavy duty commercial vehicle sales.
SPEAKER_12: So there's still a lot of interest there just despite, you know, the list of half a dozen
SPEAKER_12: things the federal government's done to try to squash the market.
SPEAKER_12: Exactly.
Unknown: Yep.
Unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_14: So like I said, there are definitely policy headwinds, but price is that opportunity from
SPEAKER_14: a tailwind standpoint.
SPEAKER_14: And like I said, you know, as you see on the left-hand side, you know, total cost of ownership
SPEAKER_14: for new EVs, you're actually seeing it achieve lower than internal combustion engines without
SPEAKER_14: tax credits over time.
SPEAKER_14: So that is going to be an opportunity in our service territory as we think about maintenance
SPEAKER_14: costs, as we think about our low electricity rates, definitely opportunities to continue
SPEAKER_14: to find value in adopting electric vehicles even without the tax credit.
SPEAKER_14: Other things that we're seeing is that the global market is continuing to expand.
SPEAKER_14: So auto OEMs are not just getting out just because, you know, the U.S. is pulling back.
SPEAKER_14: So you know, there has been automaker announcements of scaling back EV investments, but they continue
SPEAKER_14: to advance EV and battery technologies because they have to compete with the Chinese automakers,
SPEAKER_14: right?
SPEAKER_14: We are also seeing that a number of OEMs are planning to release sub-30,000 vehicles with
SPEAKER_14: 300-mile range in 2026.
SPEAKER_14: So I think this goes back to like, hey, what's the price point and the sweet spot to continue
SPEAKER_14: to encourage adoption?
SPEAKER_14: And you know, we're seeing technology evolve as well.
SPEAKER_14: We have a number of manufacturers that are going to be launching solid-state battery
SPEAKER_14: technologies in the later part of the decade.
SPEAKER_14: You've probably read about how they've got much more extended range.
SPEAKER_14: You know, Toyota's new performance lithium-ion solid-state batteries is going to achieve
SPEAKER_14: a 490-mile range, and their future batteries, they're projecting to reach about a 620-mile
SPEAKER_14: range.
SPEAKER_14: So technology is continuing to evolve to be able to continue to support the market.
SPEAKER_14: And then also on the used car sales, you know, we had been seeing a lot of supply challenges
SPEAKER_14: and not seeing a lot of used EVs, but now we're actually seeing used EVs nearing price
SPEAKER_14: parity between the used internal combustion engine vehicles as well as EVs.
SPEAKER_14: So in August, the price difference fell to just $897, which is the lowest that it's actually
SPEAKER_14: ever been on record.
SPEAKER_14: And we're seeing lease returns as well as trade-ins that are actually boosting the supply
SPEAKER_14: of used EVs.
SPEAKER_14: So again, to reiterate, like, again, what are we going to focus on?
SPEAKER_14: How do we need to be much more deliberate on what we do is to shift that focus from
SPEAKER_14: incentives to really thinking about vehicle performance, thinking about technology evolution,
SPEAKER_14: and really looking at total cost of ownership as we continue to encourage our customers
SPEAKER_14: to adopt EVs, both at the light duty side as well as on the medium and heavy duty side.
Unknown: Rachel?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Just for a second.
SPEAKER_01: I read an article today that Ford has decided not to continue with the electric F-150.
SPEAKER_01: So are they still going to be spending $4 billion?
SPEAKER_14: So what I have heard, and thank you, staff, for preparing me, is that they may not continue
SPEAKER_14: to sell more new ones, but they have some, or produce new ones, but they have some that
SPEAKER_14: are already in production, and they will be introducing some sub $30,000, so more cost-competitive
SPEAKER_14: ones.
SPEAKER_14: So think about it about price point, right?
SPEAKER_14: If you need subsidies to sustain purchases of certain EV models, that makes that market
SPEAKER_14: demand more challenging.
SPEAKER_14: But if you can offer some EVs in a price point that customers will buy without the tax credit
SPEAKER_14: or without subsidies, that's the opportunity.
SPEAKER_14: So even if F-150 is so popular, but think about the market potential and the price points,
SPEAKER_14: and I think that's where we're seeing some of the movements to continue on.
SPEAKER_14: But Drew?
Unknown: So a little bit about the F-150 Lightning.
SPEAKER_13: It was created as a reaction to the lack of a product in that segment by Ford.
SPEAKER_13: They took a regular F-150, they took the cab, the body, and all the other stuff, and they
SPEAKER_13: basically went to suppliers, and they put everything else they needed, purchased piece
SPEAKER_13: by piece from a supplier, to make that vehicle.
SPEAKER_13: It makes it extremely expensive, and the customer experience is not very good because
SPEAKER_13: it's not a seemingly made vehicle.
SPEAKER_13: You're going to hear this term called a software-defined vehicle, which is really what they mean is
SPEAKER_13: a very thoughtfully and purposely designed vehicle around a singular consumer experience.
SPEAKER_13: Because of that, and I launched the F-150 at San Antonio at CPS Energy.
SPEAKER_13: Linda Zane was a head designer, and we had long talks about what it took to get them
SPEAKER_13: in that product.
SPEAKER_13: They basically developed a vehicle in a year and a half where a vehicle normally takes
SPEAKER_13: five years to develop.
SPEAKER_13: It was never going to be cost-effective.
SPEAKER_13: But with the offset from essentially carbon emissions credit, it made it viable for Ford
SPEAKER_13: to continue to manufacture that vehicle because for every one F-150 they sold, they can sell
SPEAKER_13: six, I mean electric F-150 they sold, they can sell six regular F-150s.
SPEAKER_13: Because that's been taken away, because the emission standards have been reduced, the
SPEAKER_13: vehicle just no longer is viable.
SPEAKER_13: Now that being said, Ford has designed actually in California a new platform from the ground
SPEAKER_13: up to be electric.
SPEAKER_13: It's going to be a pickup, it's going to be the first kind of package around that form.
SPEAKER_13: And these investments that Ford is making, they really have no choice but to continue
SPEAKER_13: down that road.
SPEAKER_13: It is a fight for the future of Ford Motors.
SPEAKER_13: And so what you're going to see is a new vehicle platform, it's going to be smaller than a
SPEAKER_13: full-size pickup truck, but it will be better in every conceivable way than the current
SPEAKER_13: F-150.
Unknown: Thank you.
SPEAKER_13: Thank you for the sound.
SPEAKER_14: Yes, thank you, Drew.
SPEAKER_14: We've got our own EV in-house expert here today, so that's fantastic.
SPEAKER_14: So I will reiterate a little bit of our progress just to let you know how things have sort
SPEAKER_14: of panned out, sort of post the September tax credit expiration.
SPEAKER_14: So we had shown you, you know, we're exceeding our goal for the year, our forecast is exceed
SPEAKER_14: the goal.
SPEAKER_14: Actually the current snapshot is outdated, so don't even look at those numbers.
SPEAKER_14: We are now at 75,550 EVs in Sacramento County for the end of Q3.
SPEAKER_14: Obviously saw a huge run-up in September with regards to accessing that tax credit.
SPEAKER_14: We are forecasting to end the year at about 79,000, so we do expect that we will continue
SPEAKER_14: to do well, but we are expecting a pullback in October for sure and possibly a little
SPEAKER_14: slowdown through the end of the year.
SPEAKER_14: We think that we might still see softening in 2026 and 2027.
SPEAKER_14: Like I said, you know, there have been no predictions with regards to EV adoption in
SPEAKER_14: California yet given the federal impacts, but we are expecting, you know, there's increased
SPEAKER_14: cost of raw materials impacted by tariffs.
SPEAKER_14: You've got the health of the U.S. economy.
SPEAKER_14: There's continued pressure on overall vehicle affordability that's impacting every new car
SPEAKER_14: sold, not just EVs.
SPEAKER_14: I don't know if any of you saw that article that came out that said like the, I don't
SPEAKER_14: know if it's like the median or the mean cost of an EV, or sorry, not an EV.
SPEAKER_14: A vehicle now is $50,000.
SPEAKER_14: So just think about that.
SPEAKER_14: Like I was shocked.
SPEAKER_14: So yeah, who can afford a $50,000 vehicle?
SPEAKER_14: From a charger penetration standpoint, we look at the California Energy Commission's
SPEAKER_14: biannual AB 2127 report.
SPEAKER_14: So that's that table.
SPEAKER_14: It estimates the number of chargers needed to support the statewide's EV adoption goals.
SPEAKER_14: They're actually in the process of updating that report.
SPEAKER_14: We were trying to get some preliminary data, but they have not released it or shared it
SPEAKER_14: with us.
SPEAKER_14: It's actually going to be published in January of 2026.
SPEAKER_14: So that will actually have the latest numbers of both what they think the EV adoption is
SPEAKER_14: going to be and the chargers needed.
SPEAKER_14: So these numbers are from 2024.
SPEAKER_14: You can see we're making a lot of great progress on DC fast chargers.
SPEAKER_14: Admittedly, we're a little bit behind on the workplace and multifamily, but we are doing
SPEAKER_14: a lot, and you'll see in the strategy that a lot of the strategy is about charging, about
SPEAKER_14: charging infrastructure, about how we think about grid infrastructure.
SPEAKER_14: We're actually making a lot.
SPEAKER_14: We've got a lot of projects in the pipeline relative to multifamily charging.
SPEAKER_14: I actually just signed a bunch of incentives for three multifamily different facilities,
SPEAKER_14: including 48 level 2 handles at Capitol Towers, 20 level 2 handles at 1801 L Street, and 52
SPEAKER_14: L2 handles at Overlook Blue Ravine, which are all multifamily complexes.
SPEAKER_14: So they're definitely coming in.
SPEAKER_14: We also have our Reach 2 grant, which is going to be 400 level 2 handles.
SPEAKER_14: So while these numbers may look a little bit small, we're definitely focused and working
SPEAKER_14: on progressing those.
SPEAKER_14: And we actually think with the new iteration, we'll wait to see in January, but those numbers
SPEAKER_14: could come down to of what their expectations are.
SPEAKER_14: Our 288,000 EV target for 2030 was actually set back when the CEC and the state had certain
SPEAKER_14: goals.
SPEAKER_14: However, in the 2024 biannual CEC AB 2021 report actually dropped down to, what was
SPEAKER_14: it, under 200,000.
SPEAKER_14: So we have not adjusted our own goals, but the state has been sort of adjusting what
SPEAKER_14: their modeling shows of how many EVs they think they'll have in the state of California,
SPEAKER_14: what the implications are in our service territory and what the chargers are needed to support
SPEAKER_14: those.
SPEAKER_14: So this slide should be pretty familiar.
SPEAKER_14: As we've discussed, we've come and talked about the EV strategy over the last couple
SPEAKER_14: years each year.
SPEAKER_14: And as I mentioned at the beginning, our EV strategy is pretty durable.
SPEAKER_14: We are continuing to pursue these key four pillars because they're really fundamental
SPEAKER_14: to achieving the outcomes that we want, where especially as a utility, we want to focus
SPEAKER_14: on making sure that charging is available to our customers.
SPEAKER_14: Carl talked about how even the availability of charging can help encourage customers to
SPEAKER_14: adopt EVs.
SPEAKER_14: And we want to make sure that it's affordable.
SPEAKER_14: So as we think about that comparison between customers that can only access charging from
SPEAKER_14: public charging because they love the multifamily, we're obviously opening up multifamily charging
SPEAKER_14: at multifamily communities.
SPEAKER_14: But for those that can't, what that cost is to charge from a public charging standpoint
SPEAKER_14: is key.
SPEAKER_14: We need to make sure that we've got easy to build and easy to energize.
SPEAKER_14: I'll talk a little bit more about that in terms of speed to being able to get energization.
SPEAKER_14: I know Carl shared that timeline of the example of that utility with regards to how quickly
SPEAKER_14: they can get energization for EV charging.
SPEAKER_14: Flexible grid interconnection.
SPEAKER_14: So as we think about the grid infrastructure needed to support our EVs, how do we make
SPEAKER_14: sure that we're optimizing what those investments are to continue to keep our rates low and
SPEAKER_14: look at that financial benefit of EVs relative to the investment that we need to make in
SPEAKER_14: our grid to support that.
SPEAKER_14: And then finally, as many of you know, there's been a lot of talk about like, hey, in order
SPEAKER_14: to really support these growing numbers of EVs as well as all the other technologies
SPEAKER_14: we talk about, a trained and skilled workforce is really, really key.
SPEAKER_14: So first, affordable charging and equitable access.
SPEAKER_14: Really this, as I mentioned, is making sure that we've got available chargers and we've
SPEAKER_14: got pricing to help support that transition.
SPEAKER_14: And really first, what success looks like, we'd like to achieve by 2030 a cost of charge
SPEAKER_14: where EV charging is less than the cost of gasoline at like 50% of the gas cost of gasoline
SPEAKER_14: or lower and making sure we've got that comparable cost for those single family customers that
SPEAKER_14: can benefit from that lower cost to multifamily drivers who may not be able to do so as well.
SPEAKER_14: So key things that we are doing is, you know, we are launching our SMUD charging network
SPEAKER_14: as we've talked about next year.
SPEAKER_14: We'll also be launching and leveraging our SMUD EV app.
SPEAKER_14: That's actually going to enable our, we're actually providing programmatic support through
SPEAKER_14: our pricing program that will actually reduce cost for charging for low income customers
SPEAKER_14: and customers that work and live in multifamily units as well as transportation network providers.
SPEAKER_14: So really looking at those customer segments that don't have the opportunity to get that
SPEAKER_14: cost effective charging from a single family standpoint and being able to bring that to
SPEAKER_14: them with the chargers that are being implemented through our CEC grant funded programs.
SPEAKER_14: Well, as mentioned, installing a lot of chargers through those grant programs.
SPEAKER_14: We're also looking at launching a workforce, a workplace charging program to enable customers
SPEAKER_14: more access to EV charging as well as making sure that they're able to leverage lower cost
SPEAKER_14: charging which being able to serve them at certain times of the day can be valuable.
SPEAKER_14: And then a sort of a future look from a 2030 standpoint is, as you know, we're doing a
SPEAKER_14: lot of, we're doing a lot of investment in advanced technologies as we think about next
SPEAKER_14: generation meters and grid edge technologies that sort of in that late 2020s, maybe a little
SPEAKER_14: bit post 2030 is to be able to have EV sub-metering technologies where you can actually measure
SPEAKER_14: what the EV charging is and offer those lower cost EV specific rate at multifamily housing.
SPEAKER_14: On the easy to build, easy to energize, this is really like, hey, how do we help support
SPEAKER_14: reducing that time to energization for those EV charging platforms and charging plazas
SPEAKER_14: or even workplace charging that really needs pretty substantial capacity in order to be
SPEAKER_14: able to charge?
SPEAKER_14: So we've been working on this for quite some time, but one thing is the timeline.
SPEAKER_14: And the other thing, as Carl mentioned, is there's costs as well.
SPEAKER_14: And so a lot of the investor owned utilities actually have make ready programs that actually
SPEAKER_14: helps reduce the cost for customers or especially commercial customers that are looking to energize.
SPEAKER_14: And so how do we really think about that proposition for customers within our service territory?
SPEAKER_14: So one of the things we've been working on is a hosting capacity map.
SPEAKER_14: We actually have one and we are working with EPRI through their EVs to scale E roadmap,
SPEAKER_14: which is a publicly facing map of the entire U.S.
SPEAKER_14: You can go check it out.
SPEAKER_14: And actually several utilities, I think it's like 14 or so, have actually provided hosting
SPEAKER_14: capacity maps that are loaded into E roadmap.
SPEAKER_14: So an Amazon or an enterprise rental car can go and look and see where there's hosting
SPEAKER_14: capacity, that if they're interested in putting EV charging, they can do a little bit of analysis
SPEAKER_14: on their own before they actually go and do a formal process relative to working with
SPEAKER_14: the utility.
SPEAKER_14: We have provided to EPRI substation level hosting capacity maps.
SPEAKER_14: They haven't loaded them yet, but we'll be loading them up.
SPEAKER_14: And then internally we have the hosting capacity maps completed at the feeder level for our
SPEAKER_14: own internal purposes to work through things as well.
SPEAKER_14: We've already done some flexible interconnection processes in order to help encourage customers
SPEAKER_14: that are wanting to do EV charging plazas to be able to electrify quickly.
SPEAKER_14: We'll be formalizing that process to make sure we've got that.
SPEAKER_14: And so one of the success metrics is making sure that we're enrolling many customers in
SPEAKER_14: flexible connection agreements and really lowering the bar and making it easier for
SPEAKER_14: customers to do.
SPEAKER_14: And then that faster development and cheaper operating environment than PG&E, we're always
SPEAKER_14: competitive, right?
SPEAKER_14: So how do we think about the costs?
SPEAKER_14: They do have make ready.
SPEAKER_14: So what are those potential programmatic or economic development offerings that really
SPEAKER_14: think about the financial implications to us and to them and be able to help them transition
Unknown: to encourage that fleet and medium heavy duty adoption?
SPEAKER_14: One of the things we already have in the process is a commercial EV pilot rate.
SPEAKER_14: That's kind of an example of what we've done, but continuing to progress against that.
SPEAKER_14: Flexible integration for resilient grids.
SPEAKER_14: So how can we really take advantage?
SPEAKER_14: So in order to keep rates low, we need to make sure that we are optimizing the investments
SPEAKER_14: that we make in the grid in order to help support that EV charging.
SPEAKER_14: And that is really going to help contribute towards downward rate pressure for SMUD.
SPEAKER_14: So as we're getting the revenue from the electricity sales, but optimizing the investments, we
SPEAKER_14: need to make in the grid to support that.
SPEAKER_14: Also to support our zero carbon goals, we need that flexibility through managed charging
SPEAKER_14: and future V2G or V1G, V2X and all of those things for those applications.
SPEAKER_14: As for us, from a managed EV charging standpoint, we are going to be operationalizing our managed
SPEAKER_14: EV charging program next year.
SPEAKER_14: We're hoping to get to by 2030 that 50% of all of our impacted transformers have customers
SPEAKER_14: that are participating in managed EV charging so that we can actually mitigate the investments
SPEAKER_14: we need to prevent changing out some of those transformers.
SPEAKER_14: And to enable at least 35 megawatts of V to A or V to G EV resources by 2030 to begin
SPEAKER_14: leveraging that battery storage capacity.
SPEAKER_14: As we shared before, leaving it unmanaged could cost us a lot.
SPEAKER_14: So really it's an opportunity for us from a cost saving standpoint to really be able
SPEAKER_14: to get the benefits, the financial benefits from an EV charging standpoint.
SPEAKER_14: And then we've talked a lot about V2G.
SPEAKER_14: I know there's a number of questions and appreciate our external speakers kind of speaking to
SPEAKER_14: that.
SPEAKER_14: One thing that we're seeing is that it's still pretty expensive for customers to get that
SPEAKER_14: hardware to do the V to H or V to G.
SPEAKER_14: It's like in that $15,000 to $20,000.
SPEAKER_14: And so one big thing is, can you do it now?
SPEAKER_14: Yes.
SPEAKER_14: Does it make sense cost wise?
SPEAKER_14: It depends on probably the customer's value proposition for that resiliency.
SPEAKER_14: And it also as we think about the access to that battery storage capacity, what the value
SPEAKER_14: of that is to us.
SPEAKER_14: And so that's a lot of work that our teams are working together on working through.
SPEAKER_14: Yes.
SPEAKER_12: Could you just maybe speak a word to the status of our Twin Rivers electrification work?
SPEAKER_14: I don't know if James had talked about that in his SD10 report out in October.
SPEAKER_14: My understanding is the Twin Rivers specifically has gone through a number of transitions because
SPEAKER_14: when we started out, the company that we had for the charging, so the buses are EV, V2G
SPEAKER_14: enabled.
SPEAKER_14: But the charging company that we were working with was something.
SPEAKER_14: And then it was bought by Ford.
SPEAKER_14: And so it went to Ford Pro.
SPEAKER_14: And then I think there had been just some iterations and there's been some challenges.
SPEAKER_14: But happy to have James send a follow up on kind of the exact status of that.
SPEAKER_14: So like I said, I know the school buses are V2G enabled, but there's been some challenges
SPEAKER_14: relative to the hardware, especially given the transitions and buyouts of the different
SPEAKER_14: companies.
Unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_14: Last pillar, which is workforce.
SPEAKER_14: So I know Dr. Webster and Jacob Kadees have spoken about the roadmap for workforce development.
SPEAKER_14: It's hard to develop a workforce for EV specific things.
SPEAKER_14: And then you've got the boom and the bust with regards to funding from an EV standpoint
SPEAKER_14: that can make it challenging.
SPEAKER_14: So really needing to make sure that we are doing workforce development programs to be
SPEAKER_14: able to do multiple industries and technologies and also having that roadmap to start from
SPEAKER_14: entry level positions all the way to high road careers.
SPEAKER_14: So really important of navigating that path.
SPEAKER_14: So a lot of work that we'll be doing over the next several years is identifying and
SPEAKER_14: tracking that job demand growth.
SPEAKER_14: So really understanding by sector what those needs are and how our workforce development
SPEAKER_14: offerings can intervene and actually support those.
SPEAKER_14: Working with employer coalitions to be able to create that employment pipeline across
SPEAKER_14: the multiple industries.
SPEAKER_14: And then as we're doing with economic development and new business development, attracting those
SPEAKER_14: new transportation electrification businesses that are really going to help support and
SPEAKER_14: have that demand and create that demand from a job standpoint so that our workforce programs
SPEAKER_14: can really flow into careers.
SPEAKER_14: So Carl had talked about EV organization structure and best practices.
SPEAKER_14: I'm happy to report that we have one team now.
SPEAKER_14: So with Ed Hamzawi's retirement, we actually combined strategy all the way through delivery.
SPEAKER_14: So now I have under distributed energy solutions.
SPEAKER_14: Really that end to end from really what is our strategy, what are our plan to deliver
SPEAKER_14: the strategy and then actually running the programs to be able to do so.
SPEAKER_14: So as we think about the go to for EVs and what Carl talked is core functions that's
SPEAKER_14: really held in my organization from a distributed energy solution standpoint.
SPEAKER_14: And just like Carl mentioned, DES certainly does not do all this ourselves.
SPEAKER_14: And actually these groups on the right hand side are not inclusive, all inclusive of all
SPEAKER_14: the different teams that touch EV.
SPEAKER_14: But what we wanted to show for the board, because I know there's interest, is where
SPEAKER_14: are those customer facing teams that are really, really key as we think about EVs?
SPEAKER_14: So you've got your strategic account.
SPEAKER_14: So in the commercial side, right, you've got your strategic account advisors.
SPEAKER_14: They are really the primary relationship with the customer and being able to work with our
SPEAKER_14: customer to develop solutions as they're interested in EVs.
SPEAKER_14: You've got commercial development.
SPEAKER_14: As you look at projects and looking at EV charging or putting in EV charging depots,
SPEAKER_14: they are really kind of that place you go first to be able to intake upon that interest.
SPEAKER_14: On the residential side, we launched our call smud first campaign.
SPEAKER_14: It seems like last year, but it might have been two years ago.
SPEAKER_14: I can't remember.
SPEAKER_14: It was a few years ago.
SPEAKER_14: Our customer support center actually supports call smud first.
SPEAKER_14: And really with the growth of customers that are interested in EVs and the ones that have
SPEAKER_14: adopted EVs, really having that support from the customer support center to be able to
Unknown: triage at that first tier and really be able to answer our questions is key.
SPEAKER_14: And then you've got our special assistance program as well as sustainable communities
SPEAKER_14: that support our sustainable communities and community impact plan as well as low income
SPEAKER_14: customers.
SPEAKER_14: And then we've also got additional teams like distribution planning and line design as we
SPEAKER_14: think about capacity needed for EV charging.
SPEAKER_14: They do that project engineering and engineerization support.
SPEAKER_14: And we've got our R&D team that actually looks at technologies that support our EVs and they
SPEAKER_14: do pilots and they do testing prior to going out and rolling out to commercial operations.
SPEAKER_14: So last slide.
SPEAKER_14: Finally, the key thing is what are the key takeaways that I want to make sure you have
SPEAKER_14: is given the headwinds that we're facing to really drive and capture that next wave of
SPEAKER_14: EV adoption and continue to push forward with our goals.
SPEAKER_14: We need to facilitate accessible charging.
SPEAKER_14: We really need to open up to that next tranche of customers for adoption and we need to have
SPEAKER_14: accessibility and we need to make sure that it's affordable, that it's scalable and that
SPEAKER_14: it's grid friendly.
SPEAKER_14: So those are really, really key.
SPEAKER_14: With that policy uncertainty, the things that we're going to be doing is focusing on that
SPEAKER_14: total cost of ownership, focusing on the improved customer experience to make sure we capture
SPEAKER_14: the next phase of EV adoption.
SPEAKER_14: We do need to partner.
SPEAKER_14: We need to pool our resources in the region and make sure that we're more tightly coordinated
SPEAKER_14: in terms of focus for impact.
SPEAKER_14: We are shifting to more online self-service tools where possible that can actually reduce
SPEAKER_14: some of our costs.
SPEAKER_14: We want to be our trusted advisor for our customer.
SPEAKER_14: We've got multiple pathways for them to do so, but we also need to see where we can actually
SPEAKER_14: reduce some of our costs to really be able to be focused on our investments.
SPEAKER_14: We need to continue to leverage state grants given the loss of federal funding and driving
SPEAKER_14: higher utilization of our charging network will actually help from a cost recovery and
SPEAKER_14: be able to help support long-term viability.
SPEAKER_14: So with that, happy to answer any questions and bring back Drew and Carl as also appropriate.
Unknown: Does anybody have questions for Rachel?
Unknown: Dave?
Unknown: Yeah.
Unknown: Thanks, Rachel.
SPEAKER_11: I apologize if I missed something that you or the other speakers touched on.
SPEAKER_11: What is the current status of the building code environment to support electrification
SPEAKER_11: of transportation in our local jurisdictions?
SPEAKER_14: So I don't know them off the top of my head, but I do know that we have EV chargers for
SPEAKER_14: buildings.
SPEAKER_14: There are certain regulations.
SPEAKER_14: I can get them for you because I think there's different tiers as well, similar to kind of
SPEAKER_14: what Carl had sort of spoke about.
SPEAKER_14: So happy to get you those as follow-up of what the different tiers are.
SPEAKER_14: Rachel, I can actually answer that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, for Sacramento, we really actually had adopted what they call a CalGreen for
SPEAKER_00: EV-ready.
SPEAKER_00: So pretty much all the multifamily units, that's 20 plus.
SPEAKER_00: They got to get a certain percentage of it.
SPEAKER_00: 25 percent is going to be EV-ready.
SPEAKER_00: And then EV chargers, 10 percent of the parking spaces.
SPEAKER_00: And then really, if you think about all the new homes that are being built.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, my daughter is actually in the process of buying a home.
SPEAKER_00: The builders are actually on every single garage giving you the options to put in a
SPEAKER_00: charger and a plug.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, there's costs associated with it.
SPEAKER_00: So almost all new homes now is going to be EV-ready.
SPEAKER_00: So I think Sacramento is one of the counties that actually has worked with the builders
SPEAKER_00: and also developing the developer communities to really actually try to have both public
SPEAKER_00: charging infrastructure ready and then also to have commercial buildings ready, multifamily
SPEAKER_00: and single-family units.
SPEAKER_12: Also really, let me add a real quick.
SPEAKER_12: Sure.
SPEAKER_12: One of the things I staffed a few, no, three or four years ago now was the commercial heavy
SPEAKER_12: duty standards.
SPEAKER_12: So those are still in place.
SPEAKER_12: And it depends on the type of building and its square footage size.
SPEAKER_12: It depends how many KVA of excess capacity.
SPEAKER_12: It ranges between two and 400 as well.
SPEAKER_12: What I don't know is if that's getting caught up in the recent legal changes to the building
SPEAKER_12: code and not letting them make any changes for, I think, it was five years.
SPEAKER_12: So that's interesting.
SPEAKER_12: All right.
Unknown: Sorry.
Unknown: Is that it?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_11: I just wanted to comment that I was really struck by the information that was presented
SPEAKER_11: about electric vehicle actually saves each household $2,000 a year.
SPEAKER_11: And I'm just...
SPEAKER_11: That's a really big number for a lot of households.
SPEAKER_11: And it's really sad that the number of electric vehicles that are forecast is going to be
SPEAKER_11: three million less.
SPEAKER_11: So that's like billions of dollars that are leaving communities all over.
SPEAKER_11: But I'd really like to see us sort of drive home that point to the community because I
SPEAKER_11: don't think people quite understand how much less expensive it is to operate an electric
SPEAKER_11: vehicle.
SPEAKER_11: So even though it's been pretty obvious for quite a while.
SPEAKER_14: Yeah.
SPEAKER_14: I think we've done the advertisement as sort of a comparison on the gallon to gas.
SPEAKER_14: But maybe the magnitude of just the total dollar alone, especially because you can also
SPEAKER_14: potentially save on that maintenance piece, is something we should look more into.
Unknown: Thanks.
Unknown: Thank you, Rachel.
SPEAKER_01: I tell you, I think this is a great presentation.
SPEAKER_01: Really good goals and different things that you all are working on.
SPEAKER_01: I guess I still feel like we're not doing a whole lot to build EV infrastructure with
SPEAKER_01: partners.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's not our goal.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm an EV owner too, and I have that same experience of when I'm at home, I don't
SPEAKER_01: worry about it at all.
SPEAKER_01: But when I'm going to different places, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of EV charging.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm just wondering, isn't there a way to partner with an EV company that is stable
SPEAKER_01: and not going to go out of business in two years to get more of the chargers in?
SPEAKER_01: And we didn't get numbers on how many were going into multifamily and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So it's hard for me to wrap my head around.
SPEAKER_01: Are we really putting a lot more chargers out there?
SPEAKER_14: And maybe what I should do next time is show you the incremental add of the chargers.
SPEAKER_14: And that can definitely be added to our ZCP update too, of how many incremental chargers
SPEAKER_14: we're adding every year.
SPEAKER_14: Because like I said, we have grant funded chargers, we've got incentives for chargers,
SPEAKER_14: and we're actually doing really, really well.
SPEAKER_14: But I did not go into all the details today because it was really about the strategy versus
SPEAKER_14: all the tactics and all the results.
SPEAKER_14: That's usually our ZCP update.
SPEAKER_14: But I think that that's good feedback of understanding what that incremental build is every year.
SPEAKER_14: And maybe we can even do, like maybe I can do a map where we show how it's evolving over
SPEAKER_14: time so you can see the geographical dispersion as well.
SPEAKER_14: So maybe that's something that I could do to help.
SPEAKER_01: Well that would be fabulous.
SPEAKER_01: The other thing is helping our customers overcome the obstacles of getting an EV charger in.
SPEAKER_01: And I know I've brought this issue to government affairs several times, but there are some
SPEAKER_01: people who don't have garages and have nowhere to plug in their electric vehicle.
SPEAKER_01: They have no place to park it except on the street.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that I was involved in getting the dialogue going with the city, but then
SPEAKER_01: it just seemed to kind of disappear.
SPEAKER_01: But that's an issue out there, is people who have an electric vehicle but they have to
SPEAKER_01: park it on the street and pull out an extension cord.
SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't seem like the best thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: And the other folk who wanted an EV charger was a gas station.
SPEAKER_01: And we couldn't do anything to help them overcome the obstacles.
SPEAKER_01: So I just feel like we should be doing more to help the people who really want to do something.
SPEAKER_01: And the gentleman who still doesn't have a way to charge his car, it's been probably
SPEAKER_01: three years.
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate the feedback.
SPEAKER_14: And I think this is where, and like I said, maybe sharing some more of the numbers and
SPEAKER_14: where they're going in and maybe what I don't want to call it the problem to solve.
SPEAKER_14: But the reason why we wrote out the strategy of the challenges and the solutions or the
SPEAKER_14: strategies is recognition that accessible charging, affordable charging are key issues
SPEAKER_14: that we need to address.
SPEAKER_14: And so that's why we actually have embarked on a lot of encouragement of multifamily charging,
SPEAKER_14: which can be a challenge.
SPEAKER_14: But we're doing not only charging at multifamily communities, but also doing multifamily charging
SPEAKER_14: adjacent.
SPEAKER_14: So having public charging near multifamily where we do see opportunities.
SPEAKER_14: So for those communities that might not have it there, that they can access it nearby.
SPEAKER_14: I don't know, Drew, or I don't know if Carl's still on if there's anything you guys want
SPEAKER_14: to speak to relative to the challenges of accessible charging.
SPEAKER_14: But we are definitely working on a multifaceted basis to be able to address some of those
SPEAKER_14: challenges.
Unknown: Thank you.
Unknown: Yeah.
Unknown: And I know after this, I was just getting all the people in the room.
SPEAKER_04: Heidi, I do see your hand up.
SPEAKER_04: But Drew, did you have some comments?
Unknown: I was just going to say, you guys are so far ahead of everybody else like everybody else.
SPEAKER_13: I don't want that to put the brakes on, but I do want to say that SMUD in Sacramento are
SPEAKER_13: exceptional in terms of in placement of actual reports, exceptional.
SPEAKER_13: So I know it feels like you should be doing more, but I think directionally, you are definitely
SPEAKER_13: on pace.
Unknown: Thank you.
Unknown: Heidi, did you have a question or a comment?
SPEAKER_15: Thank you.
SPEAKER_15: Just a couple things.
SPEAKER_15: I agree that I think we need to tell that story about keeping money in the community.
SPEAKER_15: I don't think people understand that at all.
SPEAKER_15: I don't think I understood it to the level I heard it tonight.
SPEAKER_15: So I think that's going to be a selling point more than we might think to a lot of folks.
SPEAKER_15: So mentioning the amenities, again, I didn't see that in the key messages and getting more
SPEAKER_15: amenities where people charge.
SPEAKER_15: I still think that's how we're going to get the next batch of people to adopt.
SPEAKER_15: And then I was just asking Rachel on regional partnering, what kind of partnering are you
SPEAKER_15: talking about specifically?
SPEAKER_15: Like with who to do what?
SPEAKER_14: You are familiar with the four agencies that we partner with.
SPEAKER_14: We've got AQMD, SACOG, SACRT, and we the Sacramento metropolitan air quality management
SPEAKER_14: district, Sacramento regional transit and Sacramento area council of governments.
SPEAKER_14: And Sacramento SMAQMD is one that we actually can stack incentives on.
SPEAKER_14: They actually offer a number of incentives for both light duty with EV vehicles, with
SPEAKER_14: clean cars for all.
SPEAKER_14: They also have a lot of incentives with regards to medium and heavy duty vehicles.
SPEAKER_14: So those are opportunities for us to partner and stack dollars as we think about pooling
SPEAKER_14: of resources that we're actually working with them.
SPEAKER_14: We've worked with them for many, many years in coordination but are continuing to do so,
SPEAKER_14: especially as we think about looking at our goals and going into our next integrated resource
SPEAKER_14: plan too is what are those opportunities to work more closely together on areas where
SPEAKER_14: there are things.
SPEAKER_14: You're probably also familiar that there's the CPRG, the climate pollution reduction
SPEAKER_14: grant work that SMAQMD is also leading, that a lot of the local jurisdictions have been
SPEAKER_14: putting into their strategies relative to their climate action plans relative to electrification,
SPEAKER_14: whether it's buildings and transportation.
SPEAKER_14: So opportunities to do that with different local efforts as well.
SPEAKER_14: So there's a number of ones and really needing to be more focused, right?
SPEAKER_14: But instead of each of us offering our own thing, the more that we can coordinate so
SPEAKER_14: that we've got more of that impact, especially as we stack the dollars, is going to be key.
Unknown: Yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_15: And I think that a lot of the jurisdictions are relying heavily on us to meet their climate
SPEAKER_15: action plans.
SPEAKER_15: But one of the things they could really do to help us meet the goals for everybody is
SPEAKER_15: to make it easier for people to charge.
SPEAKER_15: Because I know that Director Herbert's been bringing this up, but it's been a problem,
SPEAKER_15: especially in the urban areas, there are just not enough chargers in the downtown area.
SPEAKER_15: When I went to Paris, I mean, there was literally a charger in the middle of every block and
SPEAKER_15: they were free as long as you used them, parked there with an AV and used them.
SPEAKER_15: So we just haven't made it that convenient yet.
SPEAKER_15: And until we do, I think it's going to just be hard.
SPEAKER_15: But thank you so much.
SPEAKER_15: I mean, there's so much good work, as was said.
SPEAKER_15: It's been done and we really appreciate all that you've put into it.
SPEAKER_15: So thank you very much for the presentation and we'll just keep charging ahead.
SPEAKER_15: Thank you.
SPEAKER_15: Did anybody, Dave, you have another question?
Unknown: Yeah, a couple more thoughts.
SPEAKER_11: I was very interested in the point that the vast majority of charging is done at home.
SPEAKER_11: Before people do that, they have this anxiety of, oh, well, I don't see chargers all over
SPEAKER_11: the place.
SPEAKER_11: And then once they actually have an electric vehicle, they realize, oh, as long as I plug
SPEAKER_11: it in every night and don't forget to do that, that goes away because they can get
SPEAKER_11: the vast majority of their driving done.
SPEAKER_11: And I think it's really important that we focus on that, on that phenomenon.
SPEAKER_11: And if we can make things really visible, but not with the idea that we're going to
SPEAKER_11: provide all this charging that people just need to see.
SPEAKER_11: Yes.
SPEAKER_11: It's a balance.
SPEAKER_11: We're going to put a lot of money into chargers that are kind of there almost for show.
SPEAKER_11: I realize that there's utility to them as well and it is helpful to have a more robust
SPEAKER_11: publicly available charging.
SPEAKER_11: But I think we really need to utilize that phenomenon and not over-invest in charging
SPEAKER_11: that's really not going to be used a lot.
SPEAKER_11: And then...
Unknown: And the other thing is, I'm wondering if we have information and I'm very sympathetic
SPEAKER_11: to the people who want to have an electric vehicle or who do have an electric vehicle
SPEAKER_11: but don't have off-street parking and don't really want to be running extension cords.
SPEAKER_11: Those strike me as being very expensive fixes.
SPEAKER_11: And I'm wondering, do we know how many people or how many households are in that situation
SPEAKER_11: versus the number of households that do have off-street parking?
SPEAKER_11: Because if we can get a lot, I just want to make sure that we focus our attention and
SPEAKER_11: resources where we're going to get the biggest bang.
SPEAKER_11: Not forgetting about those people, but we also have a need to get more EVs on the road
SPEAKER_11: in general.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, I think, you know, I don't know that we have those numbers.
SPEAKER_14: I don't have them off the top of my head, but I will follow up with staff to kind of
SPEAKER_14: figure out what that looks like.
SPEAKER_14: The other thing, as we mentioned, is with the implementation of the EV charging network
SPEAKER_14: and the EV app that allows us to potentially programmatically help reduce the cost of public
SPEAKER_14: EV charging to make it more cost comparable, then it goes back to, is there something available
SPEAKER_14: nearby you that's public charging?
SPEAKER_14: So it might not be your curb right in front of your house, but is at least priced comparably
SPEAKER_14: from a single-family home standpoint to be able to give you that affordable, accessible
SPEAKER_14: charging that might be an alternative.
SPEAKER_14: I think the one thing, and this gets to that last one about driving higher utilization,
SPEAKER_14: is in order for that financial business model to work to be able to help reduce the pricing
SPEAKER_14: for some, we have to drive higher utilization of those EV charging.
SPEAKER_14: So that kind of goes to your point of finding that strategic balance of putting out charging
SPEAKER_14: for visibility, especially in areas where people might not see that they've got charging,
SPEAKER_14: to encourage them to adopt EVs, but at the same time also not over-investing in EV charging
SPEAKER_14: that's only going to be used from a visibility perception standpoint but with low utilization.
SPEAKER_14: So it is a bit of a sweet spot, and I think we are and need to continue to be very strategic
SPEAKER_14: on where we place them to ensure we've got that visibility and coverage while at the
SPEAKER_14: same time that higher utilization helps support the financial model.
SPEAKER_11: Thank you.
SPEAKER_11: And I'm kind of thinking in terms of the knowledge that I have just in my head of what various
SPEAKER_11: neighborhoods are like.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah.
SPEAKER_11: There are certain neighborhoods where nobody's got off-street parking, and it seems as if
SPEAKER_11: we can identify clusters, neighborhoods where there's a high concentration of homes that
SPEAKER_11: are in that situation, that that might be the best places to have those, I don't know,
SPEAKER_11: charging nodes or something like that.
SPEAKER_11: Because it's certainly not the case that all neighborhoods are lacking or broadly lacking
SPEAKER_11: off-street parking.
SPEAKER_11: So thank you.
SPEAKER_11: Okay.
Unknown: Any other questions?
SPEAKER_04: I did appreciate your presentation, and I think that when we do launch additional network
SPEAKER_04: charging, I think that will help.
SPEAKER_04: Because no matter what you do, some people's housing situations are never going to be,
SPEAKER_04: especially in the downtown core.
SPEAKER_04: And I think that's where the biggest deficit is.
SPEAKER_04: Because for time I did stay downtown quite a bit, and having a large charge was very
SPEAKER_04: challenging because on 11th and ironically right across the street from ACMDs where I
SPEAKER_04: used to work, and there was only two chargers outside of their parking lot for that whole
SPEAKER_04: six-block radius.
SPEAKER_04: So hopefully with our program we can see that if that will make an impact because to many
SPEAKER_04: people's point, it can be very expensive to help one or two people.
SPEAKER_04: So hopefully this will help.
SPEAKER_04: So I just wanted to bring Drew and Carl back because we did present a ton of information,
SPEAKER_04: and it shows how well we are doing.
SPEAKER_04: But I know your expertise, sometimes we do too much in one area and not enough in another.
SPEAKER_04: We have tasked some high lofty goals to our staff.
SPEAKER_04: Are there any areas where do you see that we could shift or support more or do less
SPEAKER_04: of or that we're not addressing or we're addressing too highly?
SPEAKER_04: I know this is just my personal opinion.
SPEAKER_04: I'm one board member.
SPEAKER_04: But unless for me, again, my personal opinion, unless it's fully funded by grants, I never
SPEAKER_04: want to see another DC fast charger in the district as someone who's owned an electric
SPEAKER_04: car for 13 years.
SPEAKER_04: Again, personal opinion just because Carl's chart of $100,000 for one DC fast charger.
SPEAKER_04: I know there's grant funding, but it's a hard pill for me because I know it's not just $100,000.
SPEAKER_04: I think when I saw one of ours, it's like over $250,000.
SPEAKER_04: So it's expensive.
SPEAKER_04: Again, personal opinion.
SPEAKER_04: So is there anything that maybe we could shift or do more in one area or keep doing everything
SPEAKER_04: and see if we can find money for something else that we're not doing?
SPEAKER_04: Just want to see what else.
SPEAKER_13: Carl, you want to go first?
Unknown: Sure, I'd be happy to.
SPEAKER_07: Well one is, I haven't done a due diligence on the SMUD programs, but I'll give you what
SPEAKER_07: I see as the biggest bang for the buck for really almost all utilities.
SPEAKER_07: And I'll also lead with I think the SMUD strategy, which I have done a deep dive in.
SPEAKER_07: I co-taught a class with Eric for the American Public Power Association, and I really got
SPEAKER_07: a list.
SPEAKER_07: We did an all-day workshop quite a bit on the SMUD thinking and strategy as well as
SPEAKER_07: I had them present to the console as well.
SPEAKER_07: And so I think your strategy vision and how you approach a strategy is best in class.
SPEAKER_07: It's very good.
SPEAKER_07: The bang for the buck things is for commercial customers.
SPEAKER_07: So commercial is both fleet electrification as well as third-party charging providers.
SPEAKER_07: Those are two very important, I think, outcomes that could really help move the needle forward.
SPEAKER_07: In one of my backup slides, I look at the benchmarking survey, which shows what utilities
SPEAKER_07: are investing in now.
SPEAKER_07: And I think it's a pretty decent list.
SPEAKER_07: It's advisory services with a focus on time of delivery.
SPEAKER_07: I am familiar with the EPRI EVS to scale, and it's okay.
SPEAKER_07: But I'm really glad to see that.
SPEAKER_07: I'm a big fan of Brita as well.
SPEAKER_07: I think Origin Rockland, their rapid site assessment technology and what they do template
SPEAKER_07: is even stronger.
SPEAKER_07: So it's something you might want to consider, and that was a key part of driving that delivery
SPEAKER_07: down.
SPEAKER_07: And then also potentially consider Make Ready.
SPEAKER_07: And then the third most popular what utilities are doing for that demographic is some sort
SPEAKER_07: of rates.
SPEAKER_07: Generally around time of use or demand charge reduction.
SPEAKER_07: So Make Ready rates, advisory services.
SPEAKER_07: For residential customers, I'm not familiar with this mud strategy on social media or
SPEAKER_07: traditional marketing.
SPEAKER_07: Ride-in drives are hugely effective because we look at those barriers of residential customers,
SPEAKER_07: you know, range and all those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_07: And nothing beats a button and a seat to help them push the needle over.
SPEAKER_07: All adoption is already fairly good.
SPEAKER_07: But ride-in drives, we see a lot of efficacy.
SPEAKER_07: Ammon Missouri is a best in class on ride-in drives and partnering with auto dealerships.
SPEAKER_07: And that's another outlet for that as well as similar is partnering with your auto dealerships
SPEAKER_07: and the auto car shows, which every city has can be highly effective in getting the word
SPEAKER_07: out.
SPEAKER_07: And as well as the public charging, which was talked about quite a bit, I find multifamily
SPEAKER_07: and workplace level one, level two, highly effective and cost and very cost effective
SPEAKER_07: there as well.
SPEAKER_07: So those are just kind of some of my bang, you know, Carl's bang for the buck wish list
SPEAKER_07: for all utilities.
SPEAKER_07: Whether smut is already hitting out of the park or maybe wants to fill in more work on
SPEAKER_07: that.
SPEAKER_07: I don't have a specific opinion on those.
SPEAKER_13: So I obviously, you know, agree with almost everything, everything that Carl says.
SPEAKER_13: I'm going to take slightly different tech, a KPMG kind of view on this.
SPEAKER_13: It's strong on kind of the tax and accounting side of things.
SPEAKER_13: There is, I don't know if you, everyone's familiar with what a K-shaped economy is.
SPEAKER_13: It's what we're in now where there's a group of our community that are doing very well
SPEAKER_13: financially and there's a large group that is doing not so well.
SPEAKER_13: And that K-shaped economy continues to expand and that's kind of where we are.
SPEAKER_13: And so the first thing that I think needs to be addressed, and I don't think this is
SPEAKER_13: an oversight.
SPEAKER_13: I just think that it's a new paradigm.
SPEAKER_13: There is an affordability gap that is going to get worse.
SPEAKER_13: Now, Rachel mentioned that $50,000 cost for a new car.
SPEAKER_13: That is the most real thing you've ever seen because that is causing our car park, which
SPEAKER_13: is kind of the average age of vehicles in the United States to go from where we thought
SPEAKER_13: was the limit, which was about nine and a half years, where it is now, which is 12 and
SPEAKER_13: a half years, which is the average age of cars on the streets now.
SPEAKER_13: And that goes and touches on things like emission problems and maintenance problems and cost
SPEAKER_13: safety, new features, things like that.
SPEAKER_13: All those, this K-shaped economy is driving those.
SPEAKER_13: And so one of the things that I think can be done is addressing kind of the affordability
SPEAKER_13: side of this.
SPEAKER_13: And that's encouraging residents to not only understand about EVs, but also putting in
SPEAKER_13: mechanisms to help them to afford it, right?
SPEAKER_13: One of the individuals I wanted to be here today who can't is Mike Dom.
SPEAKER_13: He's the chief commercial officer from Golden One Credit Union.
SPEAKER_13: Put in some type of mechanism to allow for low-income customers to specifically get very
SPEAKER_13: reasonable rates and high approval frequencies to buy specifically EVs.
SPEAKER_13: Because once they get into EV, they save money, it's a safer vehicle, and they find out that
SPEAKER_13: they can operate it.
SPEAKER_13: So that's one of those.
SPEAKER_13: And I am not sure what the legal requirements are.
Unknown: Looking at the chief legal officer, like, I know there's going to be issues there, but
SPEAKER_13: helping customers, low-income customers, getting the EVs financially is critical.
SPEAKER_13: The next thing is Duke Energy has a program.
SPEAKER_13: A friend of mine, Lon Huber, started.
SPEAKER_13: It's $30 off of charging at night if you go on the demand reduction program, right?
SPEAKER_13: And so what you're trading is, we're going to give you $30 worth of energy at night if
SPEAKER_13: you allow us to modulate your charging and your thermostat.
SPEAKER_13: The break-even was like 12 days on that.
SPEAKER_13: It's a no-brainer.
SPEAKER_13: It's a win for the utility.
SPEAKER_13: It's a win for the community.
SPEAKER_13: And from the perspective of the customer, they're getting something of greater value
SPEAKER_13: than what they're giving up, which is like the ability to modulate the thermostat or
SPEAKER_13: their charging during the day.
SPEAKER_13: And it's at night, and it's very well done and executed.
SPEAKER_13: The last thing, and probably the most important thing, is spreading the word about trust.
SPEAKER_13: Who do you trust more?
SPEAKER_13: Do you trust ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, or do you trust SMUD?
SPEAKER_13: That is the fundamental question that's at hand.
SPEAKER_13: Who do you trust with your transportation fueling requirements?
SPEAKER_13: That is the word that I would use.
SPEAKER_13: You have a 97% customer experience rating.
SPEAKER_13: That is so far and away more important and better than anything I've ever seen in the
SPEAKER_13: industry.
Unknown: And it's game-changing.
Unknown: I would scream that from the high heavens.
SPEAKER_13: So the last thing is, in your marketing, in your community outreach, this is a trust issue.
SPEAKER_13: Do you trust SMUD, who's been your partner for years, who's there when you need them,
SPEAKER_13: who keeps the lights on, who keeps the lights low?
SPEAKER_13: I mean, the price is low.
SPEAKER_13: Or do you trust Exxon, Shell, Valero, or anyone else with your transportation requirements?
SPEAKER_13: To me, that is the difference.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I would just, one last note, and I think I really like what Drew said there,
Unknown: but especially addressing that K-shaped economy, is I'll use a stat that Drew's organization
SPEAKER_07: has used and researched, is the percentage of household budget going to transportation
SPEAKER_07: for a low-income family is around 30%.
SPEAKER_07: It's the second largest expense outside of housing.
SPEAKER_07: The utility bill is 3%, 4%.
SPEAKER_07: So we as utilities do all these things.
SPEAKER_07: Well, how can we make the utility bill cheaper?
SPEAKER_07: But if you can put SMUD values and SMUD affordability into the transportation wedge of that household
SPEAKER_07: budget, you're going to have a much bigger impact than you ever could on electric utility
SPEAKER_07: bill.
SPEAKER_07: It's also a way to bring in the SMUD values to have a much bigger impact, especially in
SPEAKER_07: families of need in that K-shaped economy.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
SPEAKER_04: I'm glad to hear that I think we're doing almost all the things that you two suggested.
SPEAKER_04: So thank you for patting the SMUD staff on the back.
SPEAKER_04: So I appreciate you two coming.
SPEAKER_04: We do have one speaker, and we do have an additional agenda item.
SPEAKER_04: So Mr. Wright, if you would like to...
SPEAKER_04: Is this the right time, Mike?
SPEAKER_04: If you'd like to provide your comments.
SPEAKER_04: And again, thank you, Carl and Drew, and we'll be around afterwards.
Unknown: Thanks.
Unknown: David Wright for 350 Sacramento.
SPEAKER_09: Hi to everybody.
SPEAKER_09: Good to be here.
SPEAKER_09: Good to see you.
SPEAKER_09: And what a wonderful presentation, Rachel Wong and the Distributed Energy Solutions
SPEAKER_09: Group.
SPEAKER_09: Lots of thank yous and praise for pursuing more charging stations, up to the point where
SPEAKER_09: they are providing enough visible charging to get people to buy cars.
SPEAKER_09: My experience is that the kind of charging station I use as an EV owner is a rapid charger
SPEAKER_09: because I only need it when I need it, right?
SPEAKER_09: When I'm running low, I need some charge now, and I don't want to wait five hours to have
SPEAKER_09: enough to get home.
SPEAKER_09: So I think the fast chargers are, or somewhat fast chargers are probably the best idea,
SPEAKER_09: except for your multifamily kind of strategies.
SPEAKER_09: Those are wonderful.
SPEAKER_09: And I also really would praise the idea of workplace daytime charging, especially, I'm
SPEAKER_09: sure you guys have thought about having this in conjunction with like a membership kind
SPEAKER_09: of a program where members would get reduced rates, and ideally you would have people who
SPEAKER_09: have V2G so that they could charge during the daytime when you have negative energy
SPEAKER_09: value, right?
SPEAKER_09: And then they go home and plug their vehicle into the grid and you can reduce the demand
SPEAKER_09: on the system.
SPEAKER_09: Another thing about that kind of a strategy is it seems like it would be helpful for the
SPEAKER_09: multifamily issue, right?
SPEAKER_09: If you have people who can't charge at home but they can charge at work on a SMUD membership
SPEAKER_09: program, especially, maybe they can't be a V2G, maybe you could have like an EPRA program
SPEAKER_09: for members of the SMUD charging network, especially for daytime workplace charging.
SPEAKER_09: And lastly, I would doubly encourage the thing that Mr. Higgins talked about, which was some
SPEAKER_09: kind of way of helping people over the cost hump, right?
SPEAKER_09: I know from having an electric car that it's way cheaper than having a gas car, right?
SPEAKER_09: But it's a little more expensive than a gas car.
SPEAKER_09: So if SMUD can say whatever way you can, a loan or a reduction of their advance on
SPEAKER_09: their electric bill or something like that, to help them over that cost hump to be able
SPEAKER_09: to buy an electric car and then they would save that money in the ownership of the electric
SPEAKER_09: car and be able to pay their pay back, pay SMUD back.
SPEAKER_09: Thank you.
Unknown: So was there a person on the line?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we do have one comment from John.
SPEAKER_06: Okay, John.
SPEAKER_08: Hello, this is John Weber.
SPEAKER_08: Can you hear me?
Unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_08: Okay.
SPEAKER_08: All right.
SPEAKER_08: Great.
SPEAKER_08: Good evening, Chair, board and committee members.
SPEAKER_08: Thank you very much, Rachel, Carl and Drew.
SPEAKER_08: If you guys didn't know and ladies didn't know this already, Drew is kind of a legend
SPEAKER_08: in Texas.
SPEAKER_08: He's phenomenal in his pursuit to advance electrification of transportation.
SPEAKER_08: Just want to let you know that.
SPEAKER_08: Also I really thought the presentations were excellent.
SPEAKER_08: I believe our 2030 zero carbon commitment can't be met affordably without utilizing
SPEAKER_08: EV batteries for grid storage.
SPEAKER_08: This should be a priority.
SPEAKER_08: And I was just speaking with one of the product development people for Enphase.
SPEAKER_08: Their new bi-directional charger is going to be about $4,000 coming out anytime.
SPEAKER_08: So they are getting much more affordable.
SPEAKER_08: I did find the presentation had great information about the impact of EVs to the local economic
SPEAKER_08: benefit of the people in the local area.
SPEAKER_08: There are also a place that I see EV chargers utilized all the time are the public libraries,
SPEAKER_08: the Sacramento public libraries.
SPEAKER_08: Some of them have one, some have two, but they are always being used.
SPEAKER_08: It would be great if SMUD could help add additional units.
SPEAKER_08: These are old, old EV chargers.
SPEAKER_08: But they are still working.
SPEAKER_08: And they are heavily used all the time during the hours of the library or after hours of
SPEAKER_08: the library.
SPEAKER_08: People really utilize those.
SPEAKER_08: Thank you for everything else and have a good evening.
Unknown: Just real quick, I think for me one of the overarching thoughts is the importance of
SPEAKER_12: keeping our rates low.
SPEAKER_12: It is ultimately something we want to keep an eye on.
SPEAKER_12: We have so many competing goals.
SPEAKER_12: Keeping charging affordable is a matter of low rates.
SPEAKER_12: You see people who are paying 50 or 60 cents a kilowatt hour.
SPEAKER_12: It is totally trashed as the economics of owning an EV.
SPEAKER_12: So it is something we want to keep an eye on.
SPEAKER_12: Just two or three quick things.
SPEAKER_12: One, I definitely think we need to try to be more serious about vehicle grid integration,
SPEAKER_12: about the hardware that it takes to actually do it.
SPEAKER_12: If a solar inverter is $3,000 and we hear about a grid interactive charger for four,
SPEAKER_12: it probably only has a 10 or 15 year lifespan at most.
SPEAKER_12: Is there a demand response value to offset $500 a year?
SPEAKER_12: I think those are big questions.
SPEAKER_12: We want to make sure if the hardware is available, a list of hardware that is available, whatever
SPEAKER_12: incentive we deem appropriate for it, if any.
SPEAKER_12: Then making sure it is integrated into our ADMS and our Derm system that is visible and
SPEAKER_12: dispatchable.
SPEAKER_12: Which ultimately what automated demand response needs to be.
SPEAKER_12: It needs to be something that our grid operators can use to get value of it.
SPEAKER_12: You see lots of talk about this in California, but you are not seeing the actual hardware
SPEAKER_12: going out there.
SPEAKER_12: People can actually do it.
SPEAKER_12: It is something that remains on my mind.
SPEAKER_12: I am not sure if it will get there any time in decades, quite honestly.
SPEAKER_12: But it is something that needs to be serious about.
SPEAKER_12: The other thing I wanted to quickly mention is behavioral psychology.
SPEAKER_12: A lot of what David Ryan and John Weber were talking about tonight is how do you psychologically
SPEAKER_12: get people to take action.
SPEAKER_12: For me, I think saying free charging for a year.
SPEAKER_12: We used to have the charge free for two years.
SPEAKER_12: Absolutely excellent advertising campaigns to get people to take action.
SPEAKER_12: Rachel put up that slide towards the end about some of the specific strategies we were going
SPEAKER_12: to use.
SPEAKER_12: But it definitely wants staff to be thinking about what are creative ways that we can use
SPEAKER_12: psychology to get where we want to go.
SPEAKER_12: And you can come up with all kinds of ideas.
SPEAKER_12: I could see us saying, okay, we are not going to give you a $500 or $1000 rebate after the
SPEAKER_12: electrician installs it.
SPEAKER_12: The electrician is going to come and install it and give you a free home inspection.
SPEAKER_12: Something really, really easy.
SPEAKER_12: These are the kinds of things we should be thinking hard about as well.
SPEAKER_12: That is everything I have to say.
SPEAKER_12: I definitely want to thank you guys for coming out and making the journey.
SPEAKER_12: I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_12: We will probably see you with energy thoughts in a few months or several months.
SPEAKER_12: And the other thing, I noticed the Energize program pathway opened for the megawatt charging
SPEAKER_12: standard.
SPEAKER_12: So if we have any, Tesla put in a slew of rebate applications for their semis in the
SPEAKER_12: program's opening.
SPEAKER_12: So that would be a great opportunity to make sure we are lined up with our partners to
SPEAKER_12: get high power charging installed for cheap.
SPEAKER_12: Thank you so much.
Unknown: Great.
SPEAKER_04: Anything else?
SPEAKER_04: We do have a second agenda item.
SPEAKER_04: Item number two.
SPEAKER_04: That was it in terms of speakers.
SPEAKER_04: To discuss authorizing the CEO to negotiate and award a contract to CloudGen for field
SPEAKER_04: service management associated with implementation of services from November this year to 2030,
SPEAKER_04: not to exceed amount of $5.699 million.
Unknown: Good evening.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Chair.
SPEAKER_02: Bowie Thompson.
SPEAKER_02: And thank you to the board of directors for your time this evening.
SPEAKER_02: My ask this evening is to request the authorization for and not to exceed amount of $5,699,739.
SPEAKER_02: I want to share just a little bit of background in our journey with Salesforce that started
SPEAKER_02: with our field service management back in production in September of 2019 when we delivered
SPEAKER_02: the first installation for line inspectors for scheduling and crew management.
SPEAKER_02: Over the course of six years, we then did deploy 300 CLIC users and additional seven
SPEAKER_02: work groups.
SPEAKER_02: Salesforce purchased CLIC in August of 2019.
SPEAKER_02: After the purchase, they did determine that CLIC would not be a go forward solution for
SPEAKER_02: Salesforce.
SPEAKER_02: And then they announced the end of life for the Cloud version of CLIC that would be December
SPEAKER_02: 31, 2026.
Unknown: Due to the end of life, we're looking to deploy our field service management functionality
SPEAKER_02: onto Cloud Gen.
SPEAKER_02: We'll first deploy our existing users and work groups, and then we will deploy future
SPEAKER_02: work groups.
SPEAKER_02: Cloud Gen has a strong focus in utility and public service.
SPEAKER_02: Their solution is not only secure and scalable, but it's highly configurable with intelligent,
SPEAKER_02: predictive scheduling and embedded AI.
SPEAKER_02: They deliver functionality such as crew availability, skill sets, job priorities, and real-time
SPEAKER_02: traffic conditions.
SPEAKER_02: They deliver automated work bundling to reduce time and response and also to reduce truck
SPEAKER_02: roles.
SPEAKER_02: They offer digital forms, which is a gap that we have today with CLIC, and some of our peer
SPEAKER_02: utilities such as Puget Energy and Sonomish have deployed Cloud Gen as they've replaced
SPEAKER_02: CLIC.
SPEAKER_02: We're excited to also be able to have the support from Cloud Gen University, which has
SPEAKER_02: a complete delivery of documentation, online support, as well as demand training videos
SPEAKER_02: and interactive learning modules for the end users.
SPEAKER_02: The RFP process to replace CLIC software was carefully structured and supported by a very
SPEAKER_02: seasoned team.
SPEAKER_02: Our goal was to find a technology that met the current needs of our CLIC users and would
SPEAKER_02: support us in the future as we deploy future work groups and use cases.
SPEAKER_02: We needed to ensure we found a vendor that could not only support the end date of December
SPEAKER_02: 2026, but also had the ability to integrate with our existing and future technologies.
SPEAKER_02: The RFP was posted for five weeks.
SPEAKER_02: The procurement team notified over 26 potential vendors, and we received 91 interest of download
SPEAKER_02: for the RFP.
Unknown: 15 potential bidders joined the pre-bid conference, and SMUD received 10 proposals.
SPEAKER_02: The RFP was reviewed by a cross-functional team, which include the project team, IT,
SPEAKER_02: business needs, CLIC end users, as well as leads for training and change management.
SPEAKER_02: The proposed solution delivered a mix of technical and functional requirements to support the
SPEAKER_02: software solution.
SPEAKER_02: For the procurement award, we had five proposers that passed the mandatory questions and provided
SPEAKER_02: demos to the end users and core team.
SPEAKER_02: The list of questions and demo requirements were shared with the bidders prior.
SPEAKER_02: After this lengthy and detailed process, CloudGen was ranked number one and was determined to
SPEAKER_02: be the winning vendor.
SPEAKER_02: While we had several very qualified vendors, CloudGen's submitted bid, their software solution,
SPEAKER_02: and their pricing components showed that they were the vendor that could best meet
SPEAKER_02: our needs.
SPEAKER_02: We would be entering into a five-year fixed price contract with CloudGen, and do want
SPEAKER_02: to thank Supply Chain for negotiating a savings of 12.92 percent.
SPEAKER_02: So with that, I want to thank you for your time this evening, and would it be happy to
SPEAKER_02: take any questions?
SPEAKER_02: Mr. Chair, Rosanna has a question.
SPEAKER_01: Can you go back to the bid sheet where it was evaluated?
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at the seed credit, and CloudGen has a very small amount, and two of the other
SPEAKER_01: bidders have a huge amount.
SPEAKER_01: What's driving that?
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
SPEAKER_02: So CloudGen's going to use a seed vendor, Agile Global Solutions.
SPEAKER_02: They're going to use the AGS vendor to support them with some project management, change
SPEAKER_02: management, and some integration services.
SPEAKER_02: They did propose a reduced percentage in the seed category.
SPEAKER_02: The seed, you can see, is made up of 10 points, so they did get an allocation.
SPEAKER_02: Their ranking was based on the 93.10 score out of 100, the total score.
Unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I understand that.
SPEAKER_01: What I'm not understanding is how could the smart energy systems folks and the over-it
SPEAKER_01: international folks be spending $209,000 for seed, and it's just 21 for CloudGen?
Unknown: Sure.
SPEAKER_02: They had a reduced scope.
SPEAKER_02: CloudGen wanted to use their internal expertise to deliver.
SPEAKER_02: They do have an option if they would like to expand seed services moving forward, but
SPEAKER_02: at this point in time, they're limiting it to project management, change management,
SPEAKER_02: and a little bit of integration.
Unknown: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Do you have any other questions?
Unknown: I just had some comments.
SPEAKER_04: I've worked with CloudGen before.
SPEAKER_04: I do see that SDW is a million dollars more, so I get that their pricing is quite higher,
SPEAKER_04: but as someone that has evaluated field service systems, I guess I've always awarded more
SPEAKER_04: and tended more to vendors that are either I'm working with now or continuing because
SPEAKER_04: everybody says they integrate.
SPEAKER_04: Integrations are not clean or easy with vendors that you don't work with, and I know we're
SPEAKER_04: working with SDW, their pricing is high.
SPEAKER_04: I get it, so I'm just going to put that out there.
SPEAKER_04: Secondarily, I hope that our experience with their customer support and asset management
SPEAKER_04: is better now than it has been traditionally.
SPEAKER_04: It's been poor in the past.
SPEAKER_04: Also their UI, traditionally, again, it's been a bit.
SPEAKER_04: Since I've worked with them, traditionally, their UI wasn't as attractive and easy to
SPEAKER_04: use as other vendors that were in the market space.
SPEAKER_04: Again, my data is a few years old.
SPEAKER_04: Lastly, we may be in the same situation as before.
SPEAKER_04: This company is owned by one gentleman.
SPEAKER_04: He is the founder and CEO.
SPEAKER_04: Usually companies that are rising, it's been, I think last time I looked at them originally,
SPEAKER_04: they were started 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_04: It was like 2014 or so.
SPEAKER_04: Companies like this are prime to acquisition.
SPEAKER_04: I said it back then when I had this feeling about click, so I hope it's not the case this
SPEAKER_04: time around because we've picked, unless it's changed since Vikram has no longer CEO
SPEAKER_04: and founder, we may find herself in the same situation again.
SPEAKER_04: I hope that's not the case.
SPEAKER_04: I hope somebody like us might come up and decide once again to come up with a project.
SPEAKER_04: Good pricing, wish they had more seed.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they were extremely competitively priced, which I'm concerned about because they are
SPEAKER_04: significantly lower than everybody else and that always worries me.
SPEAKER_04: Even someone is that much lower, but their technical score looks good.
SPEAKER_04: Hope it works out for us.
Unknown: Any other comments?
Unknown: Okay.
Unknown: Do you have any other cards for requests?
SPEAKER_04: I do not see any.
SPEAKER_04: There were some summary items.
SPEAKER_04: Did you want to bring those up?
SPEAKER_04: There were some things people wanted to ask about.
SPEAKER_04: Can we add a direction?
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: Just one minute, please.
SPEAKER_06: I have two things.
SPEAKER_06: Staff will provide an update on the status, the Twin Cities vehicle to grid pilot and
SPEAKER_06: staff will see if we can find information related to the number of residences that don't
SPEAKER_06: have access to off-street parking.
SPEAKER_06: I think we did have one public comment off the agenda.
SPEAKER_06: It was on the same sheet, I believe.
SPEAKER_06: Is it that same one?
Unknown: That's not the same.
SPEAKER_05: That is on the, I think it's the same sheet.
SPEAKER_06: I think it's the other two.
SPEAKER_03: No, did you have any remarks you were going to give?
SPEAKER_03: Did you have comments?
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_06: Come on up.
Unknown: Yeah, David Wright speaking on my own.
SPEAKER_09: Although this is about Coyote Creek and 350 Sacramento is opposing that project as our
SPEAKER_09: coalition of other environmental groups and off-highway vehicle associations.
SPEAKER_09: I think you guys know a lot about it.
SPEAKER_09: Something I learned just recently is that not only are there thousands of trees going
SPEAKER_09: to be destroyed or would be destroyed, but many, many of those trees are very large trees.
SPEAKER_09: Some of them indeed ancient trees.
SPEAKER_09: There are on the order of 100 blue oaks that are a yard or more in diameter.
SPEAKER_09: So that's a really big blue oak.
SPEAKER_09: There's a blue oak in the neighborhood of Mariposa, California that has a diameter of
SPEAKER_09: 46.5 inches.
SPEAKER_09: That is considered the champion blue oak, not only in California but in the world because
SPEAKER_09: blue oaks are confined to California.
SPEAKER_09: In the Coyote Creek project area, there is a 67-inch blue oak.
SPEAKER_09: There are in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 blue oaks that are larger in diameter than
SPEAKER_09: that champion blue oak.
SPEAKER_09: We're talking an amazing thing out there.
SPEAKER_09: There's just no reason that it should be there.
SPEAKER_09: I think you guys know that.
SPEAKER_09: Again, the project developer is out of compliance with the contract.
SPEAKER_09: It's not within the timeframe that is stated.
SPEAKER_09: I'm going to ask you again to step away to repudiate that contract.
SPEAKER_09: By doing that, you will save the county a whole lot of heartache and money because if
SPEAKER_09: they approve that and these environmental organizations and WHOHV organizations sue
SPEAKER_09: them, everybody is going to spend a lot of money and time.
SPEAKER_09: And then what happens, if that suit fails and then the project comes back to SMUD, the
SPEAKER_09: developer cannot, they no longer can sell you the power at the price that they proposed.
SPEAKER_09: I've heard that it's just not going to be economical to them.
SPEAKER_09: So they'll come to you and you'll have another chance to say no, I guess.
SPEAKER_09: But at that point, all this time and money and effort will have been spent.
SPEAKER_09: It's just not a good look and it's not a good idea.
SPEAKER_09: I ask you again to repudiate that contract.
SPEAKER_09: Thank you.
Unknown: Thank you.
SPEAKER_04: And do we have anything else?