Vehicle-Grid Integration in California

California has established ambitious and comprehensive statutory goals to decarbonize the electric power and transportation sectors. The state's vision to achieve crosscutting benefits from these two separate yet interconnected efforts requires new thinking on how electric system operators can leverage plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) as beneficial distributed energy resources (DERs).

Global experts on advanced vehicle-grid integration (VGI) practices, RWE and KnGrid, in partnership with CSE, developed a standards-based communications platform that directly incorporates the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 15118 standard. The platform, defined as a “demand clearing house” (DCH), provides electric system operators, balancing authorities and others the mechanism necessary to manage successfully millions of PEVs and provide large amounts of new, low-cost flexible capacity on the grid.

The project evaluated the DCH and control system’s effectiveness in allowing utilities to potentially provide a viable and scalable pathway toward using PEVs to manage variable grid conditions, solar oversupply and other systemwide challenges associated with the state’s goals to decarbonize its electricity sector with variable renewable resources while simultaneously responding to supplemental energy market prices.

For more information, view the Vehicle-Grid Integration program fact sheet.