por 
THE BAJA POST
NEWSROOM
SOURCE: PR NEWSMEDIA
As more people in California buy electric cars and commercial fleets transition to EVs, the need grows for more places to charge them.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company has installed more than 6,300 EV charging ports throughout Northern and Central California through its infrastructure programs, and PG&E has come up with a new way to even more quickly connect EV fast-charging stations and grid-scale batteries.
PG&E’s new Flexible Service Connection, or Flex Connect, allows customers with controllable power needs, like EV chargers, to connect to the grid without needing to wait for capacity upgrades.
Flex Connect uses PG&E’s cloud-based Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) to coordinate a site’s power demand based on when electricity supply is readily available. This solution allows a site to connect sooner, while PG&E completes necessary long-term infrastructure upgrades in the area. Developed and deployed in collaboration with Microsoft and Schneider Electric, PG&E’s DERMS connects to the site’s energy management system and sends an hourly power limit forecast a day in advance so that the customer can plan ahead.
«Our new Flexible Service Connection offering delivers individualized solutions that best meet customers’ near-term needs, allowing them to connect without waiting for a physical infrastructure upgrade,» said Mike Delaney, Vice President of Utility Partnerships and Innovation, PG&E. «Schneider Electric has proven to be a premier collaborator in developing and deploying DERMS and our advanced distribution management system, and we’ve now established a template for other utilities to deploy these capabilities right out of the box. This is what innovation and partnership looks like and now other utilities across the nation can benefit from the work happening here at PG&E and in California.»
PG&E has so far expedited the connection of four sites through Flex Connect, with several more in development.
