BluWave-ai Operationalizes EV Everywhere in Ontario Grid to Match EV Charging With Renewable Energy

OTTAWA, Ontario, November 15, 2023 (Newswire.com) - BluWave-ai announced today that its EV Everywhere portfolio is fully available for the Ottawa region, with availability worldwide starting in the first half of 2024. The portfolio consists of a cloud-based AI prediction/optimization system, intelligent EV charging, and an EV Everywhere consumer smartphone app. EV Everywhere provides critical made-in-Canada software infrastructure with the key building blocks to enable more EV penetration in electricity distribution systems.

EV Everywhere addresses the accelerating increase in EV population, from the likes of Tesla, GM, Ford, VW, BMW, and Hyundai, and the associated demand that it puts on utility networks. With the management of charging events, EV Everywhere shifts more energy from peak demand periods to where more renewable energy is available; additionally avoiding grid congestion and deferring capital upgrades to the grid.

The lead project for the EV Everywhere product line was announced with Hydro Ottawa, IESO, and Ontario Energy Board in 2022. It is now available to other utility customers who can deploy the system to help manage their increasing EV charging demands.

EVs can be charged at public charging stations or at home; however, more powerful chargers can put significant load on the distribution grid, creating challenges including voltage stability and transformer overload in the utility network. EV charging will increase peak demand. This is a problem, especially if many EV owners charge at the same time. These demand peaks often do not occur when more renewable energy is available, to provide a low-emission energy mix, requiring more dispatchable fossil-fueled generation.

California currently has 1.1 million EVs on the road and approximately 55,000 GWh of variable renewable generation on its grid annually. As energy from the sun does not match peak demand periods, the electricity system is able to shift some energy using utility-scale storage batteries and limited-demand response; however, there is not enough capacity from these entities. As a result, 2,600 GWh is still unused due to curtailment, annually. That wasted clean energy could power 730,000 EVs over a year; and those EVs would displace 14.6 million km that would be driven by gasoline cars, saving approximately 2,800 tCO2e per year.

The province of Ontario, Canada, has a growing EV population forecasted to reach 1.7 million EVs by 2030, up from 110,000 in 2024. As well, the Ontario grid is half the size of California and curtails a similar amount of energy each year with roughly the same wind energy in the system. For every one million EVs onboarded in Ontario that are charged by energy that would have been curtailed, EVs can save $4 billion of costs from avoiding carbon-emitting km driven.

BluWave-ai has the solution to achieve these savings with EV Everywhere for grid operators and the planet. EV Everywhere intelligently manages EV charging with cloud-based AI-driven optimization and prediction. It includes a smartphone app available for consumer download. 

The app uses BluWave-ai’s BluScore™, an AI-created value based on:

• Renewable energy mix
• Clean energy forecast
• Current and forecasted demand
• Grid strain
• Energy costs

BluScore simply represents when it is best to charge an EV. It enables EV owners to make the best choices based on this simple, easy-to-use score. It also informs EV Everywhere’s AI-driven optimization for the local electricity network. Users can use BluScore provided by the app to manually schedule their charging both at their home chargers or at public OCPP-compliant chargers. The system will consider owner preferences, such as departure times, and ensure the vehicle will be charged to the level required using the greenest, cheapest and least-stressful energy for the grid.

“Since BluWave-ai was started in 2017, we have been working with utilities and system operators to predict load, predict wind energy, predict solar energy and tell our customers how much energy they will need from dispatchable sources like gas peakers or diesel engines. The big challenge with renewable energy is you don’t get it when you need it,” said Devashish Paul. “With our patent-pending EV Everywhere solution, now there is an intelligent way to use car batteries through the grid to offtake more renewable energy when there is nowhere to put it. We are excited to commercialize the platform with lead customers in Ottawa, Canada.”

BluWave-ai EV Everywhere connects to direct EV charging events via OCPP-compliant chargers and direct to the vehicle via Smartcar for a number of manufacturers, including Tesla, GM, Ford, VW, BMW, and Hyundai.

"Smartcar is proud to bring our vehicle API technology to BluWave-ai EV Everywhere," said Sahas Katta, CEO of Smartcar. "We believe that this partnership will accelerate the integration of EVs into the smart grid, enabling more efficient and sustainable energy management."

"As we continue to support our customers' growing energy needs and the transition to a greener, smarter future for our city,  an initiative like EV Everywhere will help safeguard our electricity grid from the challenges ahead as part of this energy transition," said Guillaume Paradis, Chief Electricity Officer, Hydro Ottawa. "What is great with this system is that EV owners will get their charging capabilities optimized while their EVs are plugged in. The system will take care of scheduling charging at the best time and rates based on BluScore."

The NRCan ICF Grid Readiness Report noted the potential opportunity for system operators with managed EV charging: “Canadian system planners communicated that they see EVs as a business opportunity instead of a risk or a vulnerability. The EV charging load can provide additional revenue and serve as a means to improve the load factor of the system because of managed charging opportunities.”

The EV Everywhere app is available in November for the Ottawa, Canada, region. It will be available in the first half of 2024 in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Texas, California and the UAE, with targeted European electricity markets available in the second half of 2024.

The EV Everywhere app will be available for download in supported regions from the Android and iOS app stores. For more information on EV Everywhere and deployment for your electricity system, contact info@bluwave-ai.com.

Source: BluWave-ai