Governor Kathy Hochul announced this week that $3 million has been awarded to three projects to advance technologies that can help integrate electric vehicles efficiently into the electric grid. Opinion Dynamics is pleased to announce that we are part of the team awarded funding for the Distribution-Optimized EV Managed Charging to Enhance Grid Flexibility Project with Orange & Rockland Utilities and WeaveGrid. The project team will leverage funding to demonstrate the use of WeaveGrid’s software solutions to optimize EV charging for multiple benefits to the utility including distribution system asset protection, load balancing in vehicle groups at the local neighborhood level for load smoothing, and advanced managed charging to include dynamic optimization inputs, such as New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) zonal locational marginal prices.
Currently, the vast majority of passive and active EV managed charging programs in-market across the country are focused on serving residential customer segments and optimizing for bulk system peak reduction benefits. This innovative project will explore emerging applications of managed charging, including serving commercial customer segments and optimizing for the protection of distribution system assets, in addition to addressing bulk system impacts.
In our capacity as evaluation partner for this project, we provide methodological expertise throughout the project to ensure appropriate data are collected and measurement strategies are deployed to demonstrate project outcomes effectively. We also play a key role in measuring and verifying key project benefits, including load shift and distribution system impacts. Appropriately capturing and quantifying the multiple benefits from managed charging programs is critical for the future path forward for these programs. This project will provide key insights on and quantify the multiple benefits streams that EV managed charging programs can provide.
Opinion Dynamics offers top insights on measuring the various grid benefits from EV managed charging programs, and you can follow the discussion:
Tami Buhr will be speaking on a Panel about Capturing the True Value of EV Load Management at the PLMA EV Symposium on August 27, 2025. You can find more details about this session at: flexload.org/symposium/2025-ev-symposium-agenda/
Hilary Polis discussed the Distribution-Optimized EV Managed Charging to Enhance Grid Flexibility Project with Orange & Rockland Utilities and WeaveGrid in her presentation “Approaches and Best Practices for Evaluating New Managed Charging Applications” at Distributech 2025.
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