New electric car chargers at a Boulder apartment building provide a glimpse into how the city could leverage innovative energy solutions to save money and strengthen the electric grid.
At the 30Pearl apartment complex in the Boulder Junction neighborhood, the City of Boulder, in collaboration with Boulder Housing Partners, Colorado CarShare, Xcel Energy and Fermata Energy, has installed two electric car chargers. These chargers allow EVs to not only draw energy from the apartment building to charge their batteries but also send it back to reduce energy costs for the 30Pearl apartment community.
This two-way flow of electricity is called bidirectional charging. It lets electric cars use their stored battery power to provide energy back to the building they’re plugged into or the grid, functioning almost like mini power stations. This can reduce the costs of electricity for large buildings on peak-demand pricing.
“It has the potential to be useful in a way that, even if there are a small number people taking advantage of it, it can be really beneficial,” Matt Lehrman, senior policy adviser for the city’s energy systems, told Boulder Reporting Lab.
The new 30Pearl chargers build on a pilot program the city launched in 2020 at the North Boulder Rec Center. A city-owned Nissan Leaf plugged into the rec center can be charged by the building and tapped for energy to reduce the city’s electricity bill.
The rec center is on a peak-demand pricing rate with Xcel Energy, meaning it is charged based on the single hour of the month when the most energy is used. By drawing electricity from the car’s battery during the rec center’s busiest hours, the City of Boulder can reduce that rate and, consequently, its bill. Lehrman said this has saved the city about $250 a month during the pilot program.
“In the scheme of the total bill for the rec center, it’s not a lot,” Lehrman said. “But it’s getting towards paying for the car.”
At 30Pearl, an affordable housing complex owned by Boulder Housing Partners, the benefits are doubled, as two Nissan Leafs are on bidirectional chargers. The cars are part of the Colorado CarShare program, offering residents or anyone access to the vehicles so they don’t have to buy their own.
The project presumably benefits all organizations involved: Boulder Housing Partners can save money and list carshare vehicles as an amenity at 30Pearl; the City of Boulder can provide residents with affordable, clean transportation and advance its 2020 pilot program; and Xcel Energy can evaluate the potential of bidirectional charging infrastructure to improve the grid. Xcel’s benefit is crucial because, with a grid dominated by wind and solar power, battery storage will be vital for maintaining power when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
“This project is a proof of concept of bidirectional charging, to assess technology with the potential to enhance customer bill savings,” said Huma Seth, director of clean transportation at Xcel Energy in a news release for the project.
Tony Posawatz, CEO of Fermata Energy, which is providing the chargers, is convinced bidirectional charging is the future.
“We’ve reached a paradigm shift in energy management,” he said in the release. “Electric vehicles are poised to revolutionize their function, evolving beyond mere transportation to bolster grid resilience and sustainability.”
By 2030, the City of Boulder will have around 200 electric vehicles in its fleet, Lehrman said. If each vehicle is attached to a building on peak-demand pricing, the city could save significant money and potentially provide grid-wide benefits.
Though the chargers at the North Boulder Rec Center and 30Pearl are “vehicle-to-building” chargers, there are also “vehicle-to-grid” capabilities. This means EV batteries could act as additional storage capacity for the grid, allowing Xcel to draw from them during high-energy demand.
“Bigger vehicles, like school buses, that’s where I think there’s potentially significant value,” Lehrman said. “Because they’re driven at specific times and they have really big batteries.”
If the Boulder Valley School District acquires electric school buses, Lehrman said, Xcel could ensure they are fully charged by 7 a.m. to bring kids to school. Throughout the night, as the wind gusts and calms, Xcel could bridge gaps in renewable energy by drawing from and storing energy in those bus batteries.
For now, the city will continue testing bidirectional chargers in various settings to identify where the benefits lie. Lehrman said he would love to see a test case of a two-way charger in a residential home.
In single-family homes, bidirectional chargers don’t offer the same cost savings because small buildings are not on peak-demand pricing. But the chargers could allow a family’s EV to provide power during an outage. As the technology advances, Boulder residents could potentially use their EVs to circumvent Xcel’s time-of-use pricing, which charges more during certain times of the day. Currently, the afternoon and early evening are the most expensive times to use electricity. In the future, an EV might power your oven while you make dinner.
“We’d like to be helpful in testing as many use cases as possible,” Lehrman said. “It’s easy at a high level to say, ‘Bidirectional charging is good.’ But you actually have to get into the brass tax and say, ‘Let’s try it in all these configurations and permutations and see which ones work and which ones don’t.’”
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