After more than a year since we started the process to provide submetered billing for EV charging customers, I'd like to share what we've learned and what we plan to offer going forward. The TL/DR version is that Gridtractor will not be offering submetering and MDMA services directly to individual residential or small commercial customers (<5 L2 chargers).
Expanding on the MDMA page explanation, we embarked on the submetering pathway to address specific financial and program eligibility issues for our Ag and rural customers, especially within the context of our REACT program:
The host facility is ineligible for dynamic rates, such as Hourly Flex Pricing, and submetering will enable EV chargers to participate.
The host facility has optimized its energy usage for its current rate and the customer does not wish to manage it on a dynamic rate.
Charging energy would be less expensive on a dedicated EV rate and/or charging usage impacts the host facility bills disproportionately (e.g. adding to a monthly peak demand charge).
Having no intention of becoming a submetering provider ourselves, we looked to see which submeters we could use and, finding none on the list of external meters and few options for embedded meters, embarked on a path of partnering with meter vendors to get them approved and becoming an approved Meter Data Management Agent (MDMA).
Finding ourselves first to be approved by both SCE and PG&E, we have received a wide variety of inquiries about submetering services, from energy and charge management technology companies serving very large corporate facilities to individual residents, literally sitting in their garage, who want to save money on charging their EV. What we have learned and informed our announcement today:
Installing an external submeter and providing monitoring services would not be cost effective for residential and small commercial customers under any circumstances.
Connecting to an embedded submeter of residential and small commercial customers would still require a monitoring fee similar to any home IoT app (e.g. security or smart home) and would consume most of the annual savings.
As a service provider to charging technology providers with embedded submeters, who already monitor their customers' chargers and can share data via an API, we can provide the MDMA service as an add-on to their existing plan in a way that benefits all three parties. We encourage interested consumers and small businesses to reach out to their charger vendors to ask them to add submetering to their service.
For large commercial, industrial and institutional customers (C&I), there are significant financial benefits in excess of the costs of deploying and monitoring submeters. Please continue to reach out to us directly or through your energy or charge management technology providers.
We welcome additional inquiries and ideas on how to bring this opportunity to more customers to accelerate EV adoption.