Owners of some electric vehicles made by Ford can now participate in Southern California Edison’s Emergency Load Reduction Program, earning money for reducing charging during times of peak grid demand, the companies announced Tuesday.
Ford is the first major U.S. automaker to facilitate customer participation in SCE’s ELRP, the company said.
The program will ultimately allow for bidirectional charging “but Ford’s focus at this iteration will be on charge management,” said utility spokesperson Jeff Monford.
“The electric industry has been preparing infrastructure and systems to take advantage of vehicle-to-grid integration, and a lot of hard work on all sides is now making that a reality,” Steve Powell, president and CEO of SCE, said in a statement. “Ford’s support of the ELRP will show how EVs can make the grid more resilient.”
California regulators created the ELRP in 2021 to “pilot a new demand response approach to help avoid rotating outages.” It is managed by the state’s three large investor-owned utilities, and designed to pay electricity consumers for reducing energy consumption.
Utilities are looking to the flexibility of EV charging, and the participation of EVs and their vehicle-to-grid capabilities in virtual power plants, to help manage the growing electricity demand from the transportation and other sectors. The U.S. Department of Energy in September 2023 estimated that tripling U.S. virtual power plant capacity to 80 GW to 160 GW by 2030 could save about $10 billion a year in grid costs.
The agency also said it expects a surge in annual distributed energy resource additions from 2025 to 2030, including up to 90 GW of additional demand capacity from EV charging infrastructure.
SCE’s ELRP allows the utility's business customers and aggregators to earn $2 per kWh-reduced during grid events through demand response and VPP programs. But in some cases, like with the EV charging program, the amount paid to customers is less.
Ford EV customers can participate in SCE’s ELRP through Ford’s California Power Response program to earn $1/kWh of energy reduced during peak grid events, relative to the customer’s typical energy use on days preceding the event and during hours similar to the event hours.
“SCE pays $2/kWh. Ford has opted to pass $1/kWh to customers and utilizes the other $1 to cover their administrative and other costs,” Monford said. “Future contract negotiation opportunities between Ford and SCE are possible. If the value is there, the ELRP program may be able to cover some administrative costs.”
Eligible customers must have a Ford plug-in vehicle, model year 2021 or later. “For now, the program limits participation to just one vehicle per SCE customer,” Monford said.
“Electric vehicles can deliver cost savings through incentives provided by leading utilities such as Southern California Edison, and current vehicle-to-home and near-future vehicle-to-grid services open even more benefits to customers, the electric grid and communities at large,” Bill Crider, Ford’s head of global charging and energy services, said in a statement.
