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> The Mountain View, California-based company helps commercial vehicle operators go electric by providing charging infrastructure and fixed prices to charge the

> The Mountain View, California-based company helps commercial vehicle operators go electric by providing charging infrastructure and fixed prices to charge their vehicles. I imagine that commercial power rates are less variable than residential rates. Nonetheless, providing fixed-cost charging, could get complicated across different states/regions/timezones.

jamisteven 6y ago
Not if they have negotiated the rates with the power company ahead of time.
Mvandenbergh 6y ago
Commercial power rates are much more variable. Large users are billed based on half hourly rates so are directly exposed to wholesale fluctuations. I'm sure their fixed rate charging offer includes a forecasting and trading module that makes decisions about when to charge if there is any fleet flexibility. So a vehicle that passes through the depot at 60% charge during a low power price period and which has schedule slack might charge but not if the power price is currently very high. The degree to which power price fluctuations can be used depends on how much control you have over charging time. If you run your vehicles down to 20% and they then have a fixed time slot in which they must charge before returning to service, then obviously you're just a permanent price-taker and must simply put up with it. Capital costs are currently sufficiently higher than charging costs that strategically over-provisioning yourself with fleet in order to reduce your average charging cost is not worth the money.
floatrock 6y ago
Just the opposite -- commercial rates is where the consultant-grade fun pricing games happen that residential customers wouldn't tolerate the complexity of [1]. Besides more exposure to wholesale fluctuations and time-of-use, there's also things like demand charges, where there's a price component based on your maximum power draw rather than your consumption -- max kW in addition to sum kWh. Demand charge management is a lot of what these commercial charging platforms do. It's fine when a single fleet vehicle comes up to charge, but when a couple show up to charge at the same time all with different times-to-departure, that's when you need to do some selective prioritization and optimization to not get ratcheted to your highest kW demand charge for the month. Then, if you run any industrial-grade machines (or even elevator motors), that's when they start adding additional charges for things like uncorrected power factors -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor [1]: All these things are coming to resi, though... time-of-use rates are increasingly common (it's now the default new rate in CA), and two or three states are experimenting with resi demand charges.

jamisteven 6y ago

Not if they have negotiated the rates with the power company ahead of time.

Mvandenbergh 6y ago

Commercial power rates are much more variable. Large users are billed based on half hourly rates so are directly exposed to wholesale fluctuations. I'm sure their fixed rate charging offer includes a forecasting and trading module that makes decisions about when to charge if there is any fleet flexibility. So a vehicle that passes through the depot at 60% charge during a low power price period and which has schedule slack might charge but not if the power price is currently very high. The degree to which power price fluctuations can be used depends on how much control you have over charging time. If you run your vehicles down to 20% and they then have a fixed time slot in which they must charge before returning to service, then obviously you're just a permanent price-taker and must simply put up with it. Capital costs are currently sufficiently higher than charging costs that strategically over-provisioning yourself with fleet in order to reduce your average charging cost is not worth the money.

floatrock 6y ago

Just the opposite -- commercial rates is where the consultant-grade fun pricing games happen that residential customers wouldn't tolerate the complexity of [1]. Besides more exposure to wholesale fluctuations and time-of-use, there's also things like demand charges, where there's a price component based on your maximum power draw rather than your consumption -- max kW in addition to sum kWh. Demand charge management is a lot of what these commercial charging platforms do. It's fine when a single fleet vehicle comes up to charge, but when a couple show up to charge at the same time all with different times-to-departure, that's when you need to do some selective prioritization and optimization to not get ratcheted to your highest kW demand charge for the month. Then, if you run any industrial-grade machines (or even elevator motors), that's when they start adding additional charges for things like uncorrected power factors -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor [1]: All these things are coming to resi, though... time-of-use rates are increasingly common (it's now the default new rate in CA), and two or three states are experimenting with resi demand charges.