Want a discount to charge your electric vehicle in NC? Here’s a new program.

Duke Energy is offering a limited number of electric vehicle owners the opportunity to charge their vehicles for a set rate as part of a pilot subscription service, the utility announced this week.

Duke Energy Progress customers would pay $25 a month for the service, while Duke Energy Carolinas customers would pay $20, according to a press release from the company. The company is seeking 100 participants in each service area, with enrollment opening Friday.

Under Duke’s pilot, participating customers are able to use up to 800 kilowatt hours a month charging their vehicles, an amount the utility says comes out to nearly twice the amount an average electric vehicle uses each month.

That’s a significantly lower rate than if a customer charged at home outside of the pilot program. An electric vehicle driver who uses 15 kilowatt hours of electricity on daily driving would spend an average of nearly $57 charging their car if they were a Duke Energy Progress customer and nearly $42 if they were a Duke Energy Carolinas customer.

“The average EV owner is already saving about $1,000 per year on fuel costs compared to a traditional vehicle — a predictable monthly subscription charge on top of that is going to ensure predictable savings when charging,” Kendal Bowman, Duke Energy’s North Carolina state president, said in a written statement.

Bowman also wrote that being able to charge at home with the predictable rates would cut down on trips to public charging stations, adding convenience.

Customers who choose not to participate in the program or aren’t able to because they don’t have an electric vehicle aren’t subsidizing the lower rates, Duke Energy says.

Logan Kureczka, a Duke spokeswoman, said the utility determined the fee by figuring out the cost of providing the electricity at the times vehicles are most likely to charge.

“Duke Energy will work with the automakers to ensure charging is happening in the lowest cost-to-serve times; if we are unsuccessful in this, we will bear the additional costs,” Logan Kureczka, a Duke spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The News & Observer.

Shifting charging away from times when the grid is strained benefits customers who aren’t part of the pilot, Kureczaka added. At those times, Duke often turns to fossil fuel-fired powerplants to meet demand.

Electric vehicle subscription pilot

That’s possible because of the Open Vehicle Grid Integration Platform, a tool that ties utilities’ data about overall power usage together with information about the demand from electric vehicles charging.

The Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit that worked with automakers and utilities to create the platform, has said it could be particularly useful when more vehicles develop the ability to load power back onto the grid, potentially providing stability when demand is especially high.

Additionally, the grid integration platform lets Duke send a signal that blocks electric vehicles from charging when the grid is strained. These so-called “demand response events” could happen as many as three times a month for cars enrolled in the pilot program.

Drivers in the program will be able to say how much they want their vehicle charged by a certain time. Their manufacturer’s charging software will use that information to create a schedule that reaches that threshold while limiting charging when the grid typically experiences high demand.

Duke won’t need to install a second meter to track electric vehicle charging separately from the rest of a home’s energy use because the grid integration platform that manages charging will collect data about how much electricity the vehicles are using.

The pilot program will last one year, beginning on Nov. 1. An enrollment window will open on Sept. 1.

Duke is partnering with BMW, Ford and General Motors on the pilot program. Those manufacturers, along with Honda, partnered in development of the grid integration platform.

Cars eligible to participate in this pilot program will include electric BMWs and Fords, including the F-150 Lightning. General Motors’ electric cars including Chevrolets, the GMC Hummer and Cadillac Lyriq are also eligible.

Matt Abele, the interim executive director of the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, told The News & Observer the organization has long supported a rate structure specific to drivers of electric vehicles. The only drawback of Duke’s pilot, Abele said, is that it is only available to drivers of certain cars made by certain manufacturers.

“As we look further out, we’d love to see programs like this offered for all (manufacturers) across the market and ensure that any customer who’s switched to an EV has a specific EV rate structure to help incentivize the adoption and keep costs low,” Abele said.

Abele also said a program like Duke’s pilot that encourages electric vehicle drivers to charge overnight benefits the utility, too. It generates revenue at a time when demand is typically low, Abele added, but also helps keep electric vehicles from charging when demand may be straining the grid.

Duke will likely use what it learns during the pilot program to inform an eventual larger subscription program, Kureczka said. Such a program would need approval from the N.C. Utilities Commission.

“If a full program is proposed after this pilot is complete, additional automakers would be considered,” Kureczka wrote.

Households can register more than one electric vehicle in the pilot program but would need to pay the subscription fee for each car. The cars would then receive unique grid integration platform numbers that would identify when and how much they are charging.

“Because the charging information will be coming directly from the vehicle (as opposed to the charging equipment), there is no way for a multi-EV household to participate as ‘one customer,’” Kureczka wrote.

More EVs, more electricity

Last January, Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order setting a goal of 1.25 million zero emission vehicles registered in North Carolina by 2030. Under Executive Order 246, Cooper also wants half of new vehicle sales to be zero emission by 2030.

There were 48,383 electric vehicles registered in North Carolina as of May, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. That’s an increase of nearly 19,000 cars over a one-year period, but still only makes up about half of one percent of the vehicles on the road.

The program makes financial sense for existing owners of electric vehicles, Jamal Lewis, Rewiring America’s director of state and local policy in the Mid-Atlantic and South, told The N&O.

“Something like this can also incentivize folks who may be on the fringes of pursuing or thinking about getting an electric vehicle to seek it out, seeing that $20 a month is all that you have to pay,” Lewis said, adding that he expects other state and utilities to propose programs like Duke’s that can ease peak demand.

Rewiring America is a national nonprofit focused on electrification as a tool to curb emissions. Lewis said Duke’s program will offer key information about consumer behavior, data that will become important as more people shift to electric vehicles and homes increasingly turn to electric heating and appliances.

“As we are shifting, it is important that we are managing that shift in a way that minimizes impacts on the grid and maximizes benefits for people,” Lewis said.

A similar pilot program from Michigan’s DTE Energy enrolled 370 electric vehicle owners in 2021. Between May and December, DTE paused charging 31 different times. That reduced the energy usage by a total of 1,700 kilowatt hours, or enough to power a home for nearly 60 days, according to DTE.

Customers enrolled in Duke’s pilot will receive an alert if they go over the 800 kilowatt hour monthly limit. They can exceed that limit three times before potentially being removed from the program, according to Duke. Any customer who goes over 1,200 kilowatt hours in a month would be removed from the pilot, too.

The demand response component of Duke’s pilot also helps control how much energy is being used when the grid is otherwise strained. Any decision to prevent cars from charging would be communicated to customers at least 12 hours in advance, according to a Duke press release.

Those customers can choose to continue charging during demand response events as many as four times over the course of the year-long pilot.

“You’re going to continue to see more programs being proposed in which the customer is going to play an increasingly large role in helping to manage the grid moving forward, especially in the day and age of electrification,” Abele said.

Manufacturers will contact people who have bought or leased electric vehicles with specific instructions about how to apply for the pilot, according to Duke. Those invitations are expected to go out when the enrollment window opens.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and the 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.