ElectroTempo, in partnership with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), California’s largest utility, received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to research strategies to accelerate EV charging investment at multi-family housing sites in their service area.

Access to at-home EV charging is critical to making EV ownership affordable and practical. According to the DOE, over 80% of all EV charging happens at home, but more than a quarter of the population cannot afford at-home charging. Improving access to EV charging at apartment buildings, condos, and other multi-family buildings significantly lowers the barrier to EV adoption and is imperative to de-carbonize transportation.

ElectroTempo received this funding under President Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda to advance next-generation EV technologies and ensure the equitable deployment of clean mobility options in disadvantaged communities across PG&E’s diverse California service area. In the DOE press release announcing the projects for funding, U.S. Secretary of Energy, Jennifer M. Granholm remarked that “The selected projects reflect the Department’s commitment to advancing the clean transportation sector — from expanding convenient charging options, to growing the future workforce and developing the key technologies that will lead to our fully electrified transportation future.”

ElectroTempo was selected for its state-of-the-art EV charging demand simulation toolkit. Through its partnership with the UC Berkeley Smart Cities and Sustainable Mobility Research Center and Texas A&M’s Engineering Experiment Station, they will identify latent consumer EV demand and assess the utility grid impact to identify a pipeline of multi-family properties best positioned to benefit from charging infrastructure investment.

ElectroTempo is partnering with Ecology Action, Waypoint Energy, and the East Bay Clean Cities Coalition to identify and scale outreach and engagement strategies with affected local communities and outline policy and incentive frameworks that will enable and encourage investment in EV charging.

As of 2022, 70% of multi-family housing in California is occupied by households below the area median income. “Delivering charging solutions to multifamily housing is both impactful and challenging. It is impactful not only because of the sheer size of this market segment but also because reaching this segment will bring equitable access to charging to many of the disadvantaged communities. That’s why we choose to focus on this challenge. Moreover, our software solution, which utilizes large-scale, high-fidelity charging demand simulation to couple with power grid modeling, is uniquely positioned to address the key barriers to this segment: split incentives and siloed information. We are honored that the US DOE recognizes our capability to be working with PG&E in delivering the solutions,” said ElectroTempo CEO, Dr. Ann Xu.

“Currently, one in seven electric vehicles in the nation plug into PG&E’s grid. We serve a diverse population and want to ensure all of our customers have the resources they need to make EV ownership an attainable goal,” said Mike Delaney, PG&E’s Vice President of Utility Partnerships & Innovation, “California is in the early stages of an exciting energy transformation, and EVs are front and center as we lead the charge toward meeting the state’s clean energy goals.”

ElectroTempo and PG&E are developing innovative and cost-effective approaches to address this critical multi-family market. DOE’s investment in ElectroTempo draws upon funds made available through DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) on behalf of the Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO).