One of the biggest unresolved obstacles to greater adoption of commercial fleet electrification (aside from costs) is utility approvals. The successful rollout of battery-electric vehicles—both commercial and passenger—requires immense cooperation among utility providers and fleets.
Enter the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI) latest product, the GridFAST online portal, a user-friendly online hub that streamlines and modernizes how fleet operators and charging providers engage with all 3,200 U.S. utilities.
[Related: WattEV's San Bernardino charging depot powers 34,000 miles of electric trucking daily]
GridFAST, a part of EPRI's three-year EVs2Scale2030 initiative, was created through a cross-industry collaboration involving utilities, fleet operators, and charging providers, aimed at tackling the complex barriers to grid interconnection. A major hurdle has been the wide variation in utility procedures, technologies, and regulatory frameworks. While electric vehicle procurement can happen in months, connecting those vehicles to the grid often takes years, highlighting a critical disconnect GridFAST seeks to solve.
Several companies and utilities who have already signed on to GridFAST include: Ameren, CenterPoint Energy, Con Edison, Consumers Energy, DHL, Great River Energy, IONNA, National Grid, Omaha Public Power District, Pacific Gas & Electric, PITT OHIO, Portland General Electric, Republic Services, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and Southern California Edison.
What does GridFAST provide?
EPRI says the GridFAST portal is designed to address "the key pain points in today's grid interconnection process:
The GridFAST portal supports EV project management, helping utilities plan proactively for a reliable and efficient grid transition.EPRI/GridFAST
Customers can match any project location in the U.S. to the correct utility and the correct point of contact at the utility.
Customers can see EV-related program information across utilities in a standardized format.
Customers can enter preliminary site information for projects many years down the road to inform utilities of future intentions and improve the utility's ability to plan ahead.
Customers need to understand only a single, common utility industry portal intake form to prepare information for a utility's pre-service request process.
GridFAST extracts all available preliminary estimates of load hosting capacity from EPRI's eRoadMAP tool to aid customers in early feasibility planning.
Utilities can use customer site inputs to plan for the aggregate impact of customer loads, instead of addressing one customer load at a time.
GridFAST has been designed to benefit all utilities and customers—both big and small.
"If you are a customer planning sites with EV charging loads, the simplest way to begin an early and secure conversation with the right utility and utility contact, is to use GridFAST as a central portal for collaboration," said EPRI Director of Transportation Britta Gross. "Enter the earliest information you have about a site, update it over time as details become clearer, and ensure your project is on the utility's radar years in advance of your load needing grid interconnection."
