Two Daves Are Better Than One: Energy Services

The ancient proverb – two heads are better than one – declares that it’s better to have two people focus on a task, doubling their efforts and better aligning their goals for a more successful outcome. That’s definitely the case with two Ford energy services managers, Dave Hurst and Dave McCreadie, known among their colleagues as “the two Daves.”

Their mission is to work with the nation’s electric utility companies to create new business and product feature opportunities for Ford and bring additional value to its electric vehicle customers. This includes setting up programs with regional utilities that incentivize charging in off-peak times and helping customers use more lower-carbon green energy through programs like Ford Sustainable Charging in California, an initiative the two Daves helped create.

The industry veterans were tapped to join Team Edison several years back, where they helped make the case to company leadership to create an energy services group, which is now a pillar of the new Ford Model e division under the recently announced Ford+ plan. This work closely ties into Enterprise Connectivity as well.

A recent conversation with the two Daves reveals several seismic shifts underway in the auto industry and beyond, including in the energy sector and how the rise of electric vehicles – especially those with bidirectional power capabilities – can eventually help the grid go more “green” while providing additional value to customers.  

You guys work on what you call the ‘utility side of the meter’ – what does that mean?

Hurst: Our work is to create new opportunities for Ford, our customers and the utility companies across North America. This includes helping develop incentive programs with energy providers to help Ford customers save money – and even earn money just by owning and charging their electric vehicle at times that are most ‘friendly’ for the grid.

How does that happen, are energy companies actually paying Ford customers to charge their electric vehicles?

Hurst: Almost. Except they’re paying them to NOT charge at certain times – and to charge at times that are more beneficial to the energy providers. This helps the energy companies save money themselves, reducing energy demand peaks and reducing carbon emissions. So if they can incentivize electric vehicle customers to stay off the grid at peak times, that can be a win-win-win – for the utility, for the customer and for Ford.

McCreadie: This is also important to help the U.S. grid better accommodate the growth from electric vehicles, as it allows the local electric utilities to better manage and upgrade their infrastructure – plus it helps save operating costs for everyone. In the meantime, Ford earns a new revenue stream for helping manage our customers’ charging schedule from the cloud.

With oil prices again spiking, this sounds like electric vehicles could change the relationship customers have with energy providers, whether it’s an oil company or an electric company.

McCreadie: Definitely yes, there’s so much more to what an electric vehicle can do that we see it taking on a larger part in our customers’ lives and in their communities. That’s the value-add electric vehicles provide.

With gasoline, once the energy is in the tank, it’s of no value to you unless you’re driving it. With an electric vehicle, that energy can be taken out and used for other things, like home power backup, or for powering tools or devices like outdoor gear. It can also be an integral part of a home solar system, storing energy during the day to use at night.

In this sense, an electric vehicle offers a double life, something internal-combustion vehicles typically cannot do, and that will inherently change the relationships between EV customers and energy providers.

When you say an electric vehicle can store energy and power a home, how does that affect the energy grid?

McCreadie: The average home uses around 30 kilowatt-hours per day, while a Mustang Mach-E or F-150 Lightning can store about 100 kilowatt-hours of energy or more. So, if you’re driving 40 miles a day, you’re using around 13 to 16 kilowatt-hours of energy. That leaves around 85 kilowatt-hours to use for other things, like powering your home during peak-use daytime hours, or for up to three days if the grid goes down. And when you account for the projected number of electric vehicles with bidirectional capability, that can really add up for the utility companies in terms of balancing the load on the grid.

Scale that capability for us. What would that look like to an electric utility if there are hundreds of thousands of bidirectional power-capable electric vehicles in a city?

McCreadie: There’s obviously a number of assumptions, but when you pool or cluster these vehicles – the concept of aggregation, multiple vehicles in an area, a zip code, a city block – and orchestrate among all these electric vehicles, the power reserves can be significant – well into the megawatts range. That can be an incredible game changer with respect to how our nation’s energy grid functions – and enabling a low- to no-carbon energy infrastructure.

You mean electric cars can actually help make America’s energy grid greener?

Hurst: Yes, because generating renewable energy can be intermittent – weather, time of day from sources like solar or wind – energy companies need a storage buffer to help smooth out the dynamics of supply and demand. With more and more EV batteries becoming available as “grid resources”, energy companies will be able to incorporate more renewable energy onto their grids.

So are two Daves really better than one to making these sorts of things happen at Ford?

Hurst: We think so. We’re taking a divide and conquer approach. I’m supporting the grid integration work – ensuring the backend systems can better connect and automate the communication and charging to enable an optimal user experience, while Dave is handling most of the utility industry outreach and awareness.

McCreadie: I agree, and the added bonus is that it’s easy to remember his name! For the rest of the team, all they need is to say “Hey, Dave,” and they’ll get at least one response!