The Electric Power Research Institute recently launched GridFAST™ -- a central online portal that modernizes and simplifies the way fleet operators and charging providers interact with the United States' 3,200 utilities, it said on Sept. 30.
GridFAST "encourages the earliest notifications from customers with electric vehicle projects to allow utilities to plan for these loads to ensure the most reliable and affordable grid transition," it said.
GridFAST is part of EPRI's EVs2Scale2030™ initiative -- EPRI's three-year initiative designed to leverage industry scale to deploy solutions that address the barriers to achieving large-scale electrification of the transportation sector.
This is the initiative's second critical planning tool, after the launch of eRoadMAP, a public-facing tool that communicates broadly to decision-makers where and when loads are likely to appear on the grid.
GridFAST was developed collaboratively with leading stakeholders across multiple industries, including utilities, fleet operators, and charging providers, to address myriad challenges related to grid interconnections.
"Many of these challenges result from utilities' different processes, tools, and regulatory requirements. Planning and integrating new electrical loads on the grid has historically been a multi-year process, which is considerably longer than the time required to procure new electric cars, buses, and trucks," EPRI said.
"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."
"For a hundred years, utilities have primarily integrated loads related to buildings, but these loads have long construction timelines, so the grid planning cycle matched those timelines," said EPRI Senior Technical Executive Watson Collins. "EVs can be procured in a day or in a few months at most and therefore the utility planning efforts need to start earlier than ever before. GridFAST enables customers with future projects to right-size their charging needs, while considering a utility's existing grid capacity and any EV-related programs they offer."
A founding group of leading customers and utilities has signed on to GridFAST's Guiding Principles, which describe what this initiative aims to achieve.
This founding group includes 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.
EPRI said GridFAST has been designed to address the key pain points in today's grid interconnection process:
• 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.
