V2G and Charging
Charging Data Shows How EVs Can Ease the Grid
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – EV owners typically fall into one of three distinct time-of-day charging profiles: midday, evening, or overnight charging. Our data allows us to quantify this behavior and test how flexible it is.
Voltage & Current Waveform Data Ushers in New Era for Residential Electricity Research
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – Now, we’re taking the next big step. Our latest advancement involves sampling waveform data, capturing direct high-resolution measurements of voltage and current at the waveform level.
The Future of Virtual Power Plants Rests on Device Interoperability
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – Interoperability didn’t matter much when Edison’s centralized approach to electricity was deployed across the country. But as distributed energy resources (DERs) have proliferated, it has become more than important. It’s essential.
Your Thermostat Could Be a Power Plant
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – Virtual power plants (VPPs) are a cost-effective, flexible solution to the challenges of balancing supply and demand on power grids. And they’re rapidly gaining traction in the energy industry.
Connecting Energy Data with Voices of Real Homeowners
Guest Blog by Hannah Danaë Goodman of CAPA Strategies – No one likes to spend on their energy bill, but for many families across the country, utilities aren’t just an inconvenience but a huge financial burden. For families living paycheck to paycheck, high energy bills can be a serious source of stress that forces them to do burdensome mental math about cutting costs in other areas, finagling payment plans, or reaching out to family members for assistance.
Achieving Affordability, Resilience and Abundance with Virtual Power Plants
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – The transformative potential of virtual power plants (VPPs) is poorly understood. Your average electricity customer has no idea what VPPs are. Even in the legislative and regulatory universe, VPPs are considered tomorrow’s technology and have not yet been fully integrated into grid planning efforts. They should be.
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 4: A Strong, Resilient Grid Starts With a Plan
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – In Texas and across the country, customers deserve a grid that will keep us warm during the next Uri, that will rebound quickly after the next tropical storm, and that will keep us cool during ever-hotter summers. One that’s stronger, cleaner, cheaper and smarter. And that will take a plan.
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 3: Fossil Fuel Thinking is Clouding Our Future
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – Despite the catastrophic failure of natural gas power plants during Winter Storm Uri, fossil fuel electricity generators are still considered more reliable than other electricity solutions, be it solar, wind, batteries, demand response, etc. The state’s biggest solution to Uri was a multi-billion dollar investment in….more gas plants.
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 2: Can Texas’ Shaky Grid Handle the Exponential Growth Ahead?
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – In its recent demand forecast, ERCOT predicted electricity demand could nearly double. Not in the next 50 years, but the next 5. And crypto and data center growth is an overwhelming culprit. What's Texas going to do about it?
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 1: Our Historic Hands-off Approach Isn’t a Plan.
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll look at some of the big grid challenges Texas has faced recently and how leaders have responded. Not to spoil the ending, but it should be a clarion call for the rest of the country to think strategically and urgently about the grid.
Want to Save the Planet? Call an Electrician First. Better Yet, Become an Electrician Yourself.
By Richard Smith – We’ve heard for years that “we all have a role to play” in creating a cleaner economy. As the electrification trend ramps up, we’re about to see just how critical electricians will be.
During Texas’ Heatwave, Every Degree Matters. And so Do Conservation and Efficiency.
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – For the second time in a week, Texas’ grid operator (ERCOT) and local utilities yesterday issued “calls for conservation” as the state bakes under a prolonged heatwave. Among the requests: increase your thermostat setpoint to 78 degrees to reduce state-wide air conditioner load. It’s unsurprising that air conditioning increases electricity demand during a heatwave. But it may surprise you to know just how powerful a driver it is and how close it can push the state toward a real problem.
A Tale of Two February Freezes – Can Last Year’s Grid Failure and This Month’s Storm be Compared?
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – The recent freeze gave us an opportunity to compare electricity use in our research network before and during the event to how people used power during last year’s crisis. Did they learn any tips or tricks? Did they panic heat their homes to prepare for power outages? Did they charge their cars any differently? Here's what we saw.
EVs and the Texas Grid (KXAN)
Pecan Street's Colin Rowan spoke with Eric Henrikson (KXAN-Austin) about whether the Texas grid can handle an influx of electric vehicles (yes!) and how these "rolling batteries" could (and should) be a solution for Texas leaders trying to increase the grid's resilience.
Addressing an Electrification Roadblock: Residential Electric Panel Capacity
Pecan Street’s new analysis explores the opportunities for policymakers and utilities to remove a significant barrier to residential electrification. By incentivizing electric service panel upgrades for existing homes and requiring larger capacity panels for new construction, we can clear the path for full residential electrification.
Grist: Your electric vehicle could become a mini power plant
Grist's Maria Gallucci recently spoke to Pecan Street CEO Suzanne Russo and Pecan Street Board Member Michael Webber about the potential grid impacts of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. Read a snippet of the article below or read the full article on Grist's website.
New Analysis from Pecan Street Finds Opportunity for Utility Savings with Smart EV Charging
Pecan Street’s new Charging Smart whitepaper concludes that utilities can save up to 41% on serving their residential electric vehicle charging loads by deploying smart charging technologies. Charging Smart analyzes future residential EV charging scenarios to identify opportunities and challenges for the grid and makes policy recommendations for utilities on how to advance smart charging technologies that will unlock EV charging as a significant grid management resource tool.
Pecan Street Announces the Winner of its Vehicle-to-Grid University Challenge
Pecan Street selected a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne as the winners of the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) University Challenge. Pecan Street launched the global competition in October 2020 for university teams to develop V2G control algorithms that optimize residential fleets of electric vehicles for grid decarbonization and increased resiliency. The winning team will receive a $2,500 award.
Behind the Meter Storage and 4CP in Texas
A new case study from Pecan Street summarizes the benefits of behind-the-meter (BTM) assets that can decrease a utility’s net transmission cost through 4 Coincident Peaks (4CP) reduction.
What’s Holding Back the Energy Future We’ve Been Promised?
Over the last 10 years of conducting research on electricity use and advanced technologies like electric vehicles and solar systems, my colleagues at Pecan Street have found there are four key technology roadblocks that are holding back innovation and adoption of cleantech products, services and systems.
Pecan Street’s V2G University Challenge is Underway!
In October, Pecan Street launched a global competition for university students to develop a robust Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) control algorithm that optimizes residential fleets of electric vehicles for grid decarbonization and increased resiliency.
COVID Five Months in: A Sustained Increase in Residential Electricity
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - Pecan Street has been monitoring electricity use and generation from hundreds of homes in our research network for nearly a decade. Many of these homes have rooftop solar and electric vehicles, and we’ve been measuring each home’s total energy use as well as use from individual circuits, like heating/cooling, EV charging, refrigerator, etc. With all this data at our fingertips, we decided to take a look at how our participants’ energy profiles have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pecan Street CTO Speaks with The Weather Channel About Summer Peak Energy Use and COVID Pandemic
Pecan Street's Chief Technology Officer, Scott Hinson, was interviewed by the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore today about the coincidence of summer peak energy usage and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pecan Street Deepens COVID-19 Home Energy Analysis with Survey of Volunteer Network
We surveyed participants to learn what behavioral changes might be affecting their energy profile under shelter-in-place. Learn more here.
Fully Charged Show Visits Pecan Street
The Pecan Street staff hosted Chelsea Sexton from Fully Charged a few weeks ago as they toured some of Austin’s energy-tech hotspots. Watch the Pecan Street episode here.
E&E News Visits Pecan Street on their Electric Road Trip
Pecan Street hosted Edward Klump and Mike Lee from E&E News as they started their 1,000 mile journey from Houston to Nashville in an EV. Along the way, they're stopping to write and share news about what's happening in this fast-growing market. Review their Week One video recap and read their blog post that dives into our vehicle to grid research.
Pecan Street @ 10: An Innovation Lab in the Heart of Texas’ Innovation Capital
By Scott Hinson, CTO, Pecan Street – We need our electricity generation, use, and storage to be smarter, better connected, and more efficient. Thanks to what we’ve built over the last 10 years, these are the kinds of advances we are able to accelerate at Pecan Street’s lab.
How is an Electric Grid Like an Octopus?
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street – We know that achieving the kind of emission reductions we’ll need to ward off the worst consequences of climate change will require a more flexible, responsive and sophisticated grid. And that will take new thinking. But when it comes to rethinking our grid, we may have some guidance from natural systems that were designed long before the first watt ever powered a lightbulb.
Pecan Street @ 10: A Real-World Plug and Play Test Bed for Innovators Around the World
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - Over the past 10 years, we’ve worked with global brands you’ve heard of and startups you haven't on products ranging from HVAC load management hardware to electric vehicle charging to home automation.
Austin SHINES testing solar + batteries as a clean, dispatchable grid solution
By Andrea Tosi, power systems specialist, Pecan Street Solar energy is ideal as a clean energy resource in places like Texas, where sunshine is abundant. But even in Texas, the sun doesn’t shine 24/7. This variability results in reliability issues for the grid. Energy Storage Systems (ESS) are crucial as solar penetration increases in Austin.