The Southern Firm didn’t want this pilot to promote it on EVs. The agency—which operates Alabama Energy, Georgia Energy, and Mississippi Energy, in addition to different subsidiaries throughout six southern and midwestern states—has been utilizing Ford electrical autos since 2023. Its fleet now contains greater than 200 F-150 Lightning trucks and 150 Ford Professional chargers. The corporate at one level aimed to impress half of its fleet by 2030; it now says it’s now not pursuing that purpose, however will proceed to transition its autos.1
Now it wished to see if it might use Ford Professional’s charging software program to ramp down its autos’ and chargers’ vitality consumption during times of excessive demand. (Ford Professional is the business fleet arm of the US automaker.) Such “managed charging” applications save fleet house owners cash by scheduling charging for occasions when utilities are charging much less for electrical energy, and put much less stress on the electrical grid. Southern Firm is especially conscious of that final level: With the AI boom, information facilities are flooding into the US southeast.
“We’re attempting to determine how we are able to save each kilowatt-hour that’s on the market to be saved, as a result of we’ll have a extra constrained system sooner or later,” says Lea Clanton, who directs enterprise growth and innovation for Southern Firm New Ventures.
Sarcastically, the experiment’s most enjoyable moments got here when the 2 corporations labored collectively to close down all their chargers. By turning off the chargers for half-hour—one thing that is perhaps immediately obligatory throughout highly regarded or chilly days, or throughout an emergency—Southern Firm and Ford say they have been capable of scale back the demand on the grid by 0.5 megawatts, instantly releasing up an quantity of electrical energy equal to what’s wanted to energy between 200 and 450 properties for a 12 months.
Someday, EV fleets like these operated by the Southern Firm would possibly use this form of software program to save cash and electrical energy. However Clanton says the utility agency wants extra data earlier than it’s able to hook its EVs as much as smarter chargers. It wants to ensure that its drivers—particularly these responding to electrical energy emergencies—all the time have cost when the surprising occurs.
“If we have been to undertake one thing extra everlasting, we would wish to take a while to higher perceive the place our drivers must be, how typically they cost, and be sure that it’s not going to affect our supply of fresh, protected, dependable, reasonably priced vitality to prospects in any respect, 24 hours a day,” says Clanton.
1Replace, September 4 at 3 pm: This story was up to date to right particulars round Southern Firm’s efforts to impress its fleet.
