Assembly Standing Committee on Utilities and Energy

Good afternoon. Welcome and thank you so much for joining us today. I'm calling to order this joint hearing of the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Energy and the Select Committee on Electric Vehicles and Charging Infrastructure. The Uni Committee chair, Mr. Garcia, would be here but for travel issue issues related to the storm, so I will be chairing the joint hearing today. In his absence, we are here for an informational hearing to discuss electric vehicles or EVs, and their charging.

Our focus will be to identify any potential roadblocks on the grid infrastructure and charger installation, which could delay our progress towards California's clean transportation goals. Before we begin, I have some housekeeping to go over. There will no longer be phone testimony, so public comment will either be in person or submitted via email to our committee's website. Additionally, I will maintain decorum during the hearing. We will not permit conduct that disrupts or otherwise impedes the hearing. Any individual who is disruptive may be removed from the room.

Also, as a point of privilege. As the chair, I want to take this moment to acknowledge the very hard work of the Utility and Energy Committee's science fellow, Sam Mahains, who has been working with us this whole year and has organized this hearing and put together excellent background material. This is likely his last hearing as he finishes up his fellowship this fall.

I know I speak for Assembly Member Garcia as well when I say that we have been very lucky to have him in our committee and want to thank him for his hard work. I know everyone has enjoyed his very witty Bill analysis that just makes those things a page turner. We can't stop reading and are very excited to see where he goes in the future.

We know that in the future that California will continue to benefit from your passion for service and your ability to strike at the core of an issue and your good heart. So we wish you all the best in your next step. Thank you, Sam. So for the hearing. The transportation sector is currently the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, so we know that rapidly deploying EVs will be critical to meeting our emission reduction goals. EV sales have increased in the recent years.

One in four new cars sold in California last quarter were EVs. This transformational trend presents a new challenge making sure that EV charging infrastructure keeps pace with EV adoption throughout the state, as we have heard from many frustrated EV drivers, and we'll hear from some probably on the panel, including myself, this is not and has not been the case. Surveys show right below cost that an incomplete charging network is the primary reason individuals would not purchase an electric vehicle. I hear laughing.

My own experience, I think I just passed my year anniversary as an EV owner, and the first three months of having an EV, I did not have charging at my home. So I was on the public, you know, living in the Northwest San Fernando Valley. I would have thought that there were a lot of options for me. However, there were not. And especially if you're looking for a fast charger, there were only four or five in the whole Northwest San Fernando Valley.

Three of them are always broken. And so it left a lot of us fighting for those two Chargers on a regular basis. And I really think that there's probably going to be some sitcom shows about people coming to blows at EV Chargers one of these days because it can get pretty intense at those EV Chargers. I would often spend hours of my day trying to get a charge, waiting for a charge, charging for a half hour, and then waiting in line again for another charge.

And it created a whole lot of challenges. Fortunately, I had flexibility to work on my car, work on my phone in my car, but a lot of people don't have that privilege. And then another experience that I had, I drove for Thanksgiving from LA up here to Sacramento with my daughter, and I told her it would be a fun experiment to see how it goes with the EV.

And it ended with her in tears at about 1030 at night in a mall parking lot in Modesto, where she's crying and saying, I told you we should have taken the train, because it took us four extra hours in our drive to stop and charge. And part of that, I will admit, was user error. I got a better app on my way back, but it still took three extra hours.

And so we know people don't have this kind of time in their life on family holiday trips or any other time. These are real challenges and difficulties that people are facing when they're deciding to get an EV or figuring out how to work their lives around an EV. It's one of the reasons that I introduced a Bill this year around Electrifying Roads so that we can just drive and charge.

That's where I would like to get to, but I know we're still needing all the things to make sure that we make it as easy as possible for folks to be able to have the power they need to be able to get to the next place they got to go. And we have heard during past hearings that on distribution and planning, our utilities have a lot of work ahead of them to ensure that our goals are met and customers receive service in a timely manner.

Quickly building EV charging capacity across California will require substantial upgrades to the electrical grid. With historic investments from state and federal governments in electric vehicles and infrastructure, the timing of this hearing could not be better to guide funding and programs in order to quickly reach the state's EV and climate goals. The goal of this hearing is to identify obstacles to the rapid deployment of EV chargers in California, focusing on the infrastructure that will be needed.

With that, I want to open it up to opening remarks from any of my colleagues and also just acknowledge that it's a joint hearing. But it's the first hearing for our select committee and so happy to have colleagues who I think are going to be joining at certain points today. I know everyone's a little busy at the end of session and excited that we're able to get to work on this important issue for our community. So, colleagues, Mr. Muratsuchi, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Test. Oh, there we go. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair, for convening this very important informational hearing. I just want to share some of your experiences as an EV driver also. But more importantly, I'm really encouraged with the statistic that I think you just shared that one in four California car sales in the last quarter were electric vehicles. And that also as your report.

The background report indicates that the state surpassed its goal of 1.5 1,000,000 emission vehicles a full two years ahead of the targeted time. And so I know that there continues to be a lot of skepticism about whether we can meet the 2035, all new car sales being zero emission vehicles, but we seem to be well on our way.

And I just want to also quickly share an experience that I had participating in the Lieutenant Governor's California trade mission to Japan this past March, where we visited Toyota, the world's largest automobile manufacturer, and we were exhorting them to act like the world's largest car manufacturer by putting more electric vehicle cars out on the market. At that time of March of this year, they did not have any we were not aware of any Toyota lines for electric vehicles.

But I'm sure, purely by coincidence, about two months later, Toyota announced, like, four or five electric vehicle cars. And so I think that just goes to show that if California continues to push the market, that the market will respond not only with companies like Toyota building more electric vehicles, but I'm always excited, especially for folks in more rural areas.

I'm always excited to see those Ford F 150 electric truck commercials because I feel like that's going to be the game changer to really expand the mass appeal for electric vehicles. And so in order to make it all work, we need to build the charging infrastructure. And so I look forward to this hearing. Thank you very much.

Gomez Reyes.

I also want to thank you for convening this informational hearing with Chair Garcia on identifying roadblocks to EV charging deployment. Such an important topic. I also want to thank the staff for putting together a very thorough and a comprehensive background paper. It really laid out many of the barriers. We don't know if there's all of them. We never know, right? Many of the barriers and the investment at the front and back that we have to address to create this zero emission future.

When we have these discussions, especially here in our committee and now as a joint committee, I'm always reminding of these Daunting goals. As our colleague has mentioned, I do believe we'll be able to reach them, but the infrastructure upgrades needed at the transmission, distribution, and generation steps of this process are truly massive. And we want to have an EV future. There's no question about it. Part of this means we need all the different funding pots available to make this happen.

It's one of the reasons I introduced AB 241, along with Senator Gonzalez to reauthorize the Energy Commission's Clean Transportation program. And I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to talk more about that. We can't let almost $2 billion over the next ten years sunset if we're serious about decarbonizing the transportation sector, especially in the medium and heavy duty sectors, where we know it's going to be the most challenging, acceleration is what we need to be focusing on. However, I think the background paper put it best.

And Sam, I want to thank you for always writing. As the chair has mentioned, you include some very important information that is good for all of us. And there's a bit of entertaining also, as was mentioned. But one of the quotes in the background paper is the prioritization of speed must not come at the expense of equity in EV charger deployment throughout the state. That's an important topic, and we talk about it not only here, but in Utilities and Energy and so many other committees.

We can't accelerate the market without being thoughtful and intentional on where this infrastructure is placed and more importantly, who has access to it. If we are going to transform the transportation sector and change how we think about refueling, then we need to also change who will benefit from the new green economy. As always, I look forward to hearing from the panelists. There's so much to learn, and I look forward to what is going to be provided. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other Members? Is that a no? Okay, so with that, I want to thank my colleagues, and I know we've invited a phenomenal panel of guests to discuss how we'll ensure that EV charging and grid infrastructure is developed quickly and as equitably as possible. I ask that all the panelists come up and join us to provide their opening statements, and we can turn to the committee for questions after everyone's completed their statements.

And we'll start with Ms. Leuwam Tesfai, the deputy Executive Director for the energy and climate policy at the California Public Utilities Commission.

I do have a brief presentation. Oh, great. There's the slides. Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Shiavo and committee Members. I'm Leuwam Tesfai, deputy Executive Director for energy and climate policy at the California Public Utilities Commission. Thank you for the opportunity today to present on the work that we're doing to enable more electric vehicle charging. Next slide, please.

So, as we begin to discuss EV charging, the infrastructure that supports it, and how we manage the grid today, I would like to describe what our electric system planning process looks like, how grid infrastructure to support EV charging is planned and built, and how each piece is interdependent. We can think about infrastructure deployment in different timelines, the near term as well as the medium and the long term.

In the near term, if you look at the top of the slide, the role of the CPUC shows the role of the CPUC and the investor owned utilities in infrastructure development and where it's focused on energization. Energization is the process to connect a customer's new or additional requested load to the electrical distribution system beyond the energization process itself, which is a key part of energizing the transportation electrification chargers. This near term role also includes building capacity further upstream to support these service requests.

And then, looking towards the bottom of the slide, the investor owned utilities prepare to serve near term infrastructure needs through medium to long term planning processes, guided by the Public Utilities Commission. This includes developing grid planning forecasts over a 15 year period to inform investments in distribution and transmission infrastructure, as well as procurement of electric generation resources. And this enables the funding and buildout of infrastructure to prepare the grid for this future demand. Next slide, please.

So the diagram on this slide really shows a simplified version of how this medium to long term planning process currently works. The starting point for planning the zero emission vehicle adoption begins with the California Air Resources Board, as you know. And they adopted those zero emission vehicle regulations. Then the CEC includes this within their integrated energy policy report or the Iper forecast. And my colleague, Director Gutierrez will be talking a bit more about that in her presentation.

The Demand forecast provides that system level and expected energy demand over the coming years and is updated annually. And we use it in our CPUC planning processes as well. The CEC demand forecast is what is feeding into the infrastructure planning and investment through the CPUC's distribution planning process, the CPUC's Integrated Resource Planning process as well as the California Independent System Operators transmission planning process.

So through these regulatory planning processes, the CPUC establishes requirements for IOU investments in distribution system infrastructure and electric generation resources that meet the state's requirements and G emission reduction goals. And that's why on this slide, in that kind of orange section, I not only indicate where that planning is occurring, but also who's doing the actual work.

So in the first orange box, the investor owned utilities, I can't see that far, but then in the second, we're looking at generation resources that are being built and then transmission resources that are being built. It's okay.

All right. And then from there, I also really wanted to indicate that the forecasting and planning process is really so essential and we work so closely with our sister agencies to do this work, and it's really important for us to be able to adequately and reasonably forecast demand and build that infrastructure that's needed to meet that need. With underbuilding, we could jeopardize the near term energization process.

With overbuilding, on the other hand, it can also lead to repercussions, which could mean that ratepayers that are paying their electric bills will bear the burden of unnecessary infrastructure for decades to come. Planning for transportation electrification has already begun, though the infrastructure planning process that I just described, we've already started it through our transportation electrification proceedings, and the state agencies are all working together to forecast demand growth induced through the Zev regulatory requirements that I discussed from CARB.

Additionally, the Public Utilities Commission, Air Resources Board, Energy Commission, GoBiz, Caltrans, California Transportation Commission and CalSTA have signed a statement of intent in order to publicly show how we are working very closely and coordinating so that everybody knows what everyone is doing. And we are doing that in order to ensure that charging and fueling station build out and electric grid planning are in alignment. Next slide, please.

So the reforms to near, medium and long term infrastructure planning, as I already said, were underway, and we are adjusting to this increasing pace of load growth that we're seeing due to transportation electrification. Regarding the near term, the CPUC has taken several actions to address concerns around electric vehicle energization timelines that we've been hearing about from the Legislature, from customers, et cetera.

The CPUC is requiring the investor owned utilities to establish a preliminary 125 business day service energization average timeline for electric vehicle charging energization through the IOUs infrastructure rules. This was adopted by the Commission late last year. We also directed the investor owned utilities to submit a proposal this December to update those timelines based on data for the deployments. So again, that was a preliminary average timeline across the IOUs, and we're looking to see at that data know, is that something that was achievable?

What are the roadblocks? And so we're getting that data and then continuing to make adjustments. CPUC staff is also continuing to analyze data and meeting with the investor owned utilities as well as electric vehicle service providers to identify how to remove barriers to transportation electrification. I also wanted to highlight two medium term and long term reforms that are underway. The first is the Freight Infrastructure Planning Framework, or Fit, and this is really highlighted through that statement of intent that I mentioned.

And the second is going to be our high distributed energy resources proceeding. So for the FIP, which started in May of this year, California Public Utilities Commission staff, along with our sister agencies, worked to develop this new framework. Our staff issued a proposal to develop investment grade inputs and assumptions around medium duty and heavy duty charging scenarios for long term grid planning.

This proposal is designed to enable long lead time infrastructure associated with these medium duty and heavy duty charging requirements along corridors such as transmission lines and substations which need to be built way in advance. Something I wanted to highlight here is really the equity element of that. A lot of these types of vehicles are going through disadvantaged communities and are impacting air quality.

And so that's just another element that I really wanted to highlight then in our high der proceeding or distributed energy resource proceeding, planning and procurement for sufficient electric system capacity is really requiring significant changes and adaptability over the next several years to adjust to historical changes in load growth.

And so in that proceeding, we're really focused on identifying policies and strategies to evolve the utility distribution planning process to prepare for increasing new transportation electrification, but then also building electrification loads as we are shifting our building uses away from gas as well. And all of this work is currently underway and with a goal of a decision in early 2024. Next slide, please.

So this slide is trying to highlight our grid management work, which is in addition to all of this other work that we've been doing. The Public Utilities Commission plays a critical role in managing the grid through what we call vehicle to grid integration policies, such as electric rates that encourage charging at grid friendly hours of the day, particularly when we have a lot of solar, or enabling electric vehicle battery discharge at times of grid need for rates.

Over the last several years we have been developing rates and price signals to ensure that EVs can actually benefit the grid and charge at times of day that support the grid. Currently, each investor owned utility offers an electric vehicle specific time of use rate that allows for lower cost electricity to be offered during times of day when the grid is less constrained, so that also has a customer cost benefit as well. Over time.

Our objective is for each investorowned utility to actually offer dynamic rates that even better reflect grid conditions, the cost of electricity and the cost to serve that electricity easier to use. Dynamic rates will also allow for electric vehicles to be programmed or automated to optimize load flexibility, so customers won't have to be driving around thinking about all of these things.

And then much of this vision is really laid out in a staff proposal that the CPUC has issued and is currently under consideration in our demand flexibility rulemaking. Next slide, please. So this slide is really highlighting investor owned utility charging investment and is really reflected against a number of Executive orders and pieces of legislation that have asked us to act on work with electric vehicles.

And so beyond utility distribution and transmission infrastructure, the investor owned utilities and the Public Utilities Commission are also working on funding charging infrastructure and the associated make ready infrastructure on the customer side of the electric meter. The Public Utilities Commission's role in this process is to review and authorize investor owned utility requests to expend ratepayer funds on EV charging infrastructure. The CPUC authorizes these proposals for electric vehicle charging programs through a very robust stakeholder process with really equity at its focal point.

As you can see from the slide, since 2016, and in response to various directions from the Legislature, we have authorized the investorowned utilities to spend approximately 2.1 billion in funding. And this is rate payer funding. This funding began in 2016 with a large scale pilot projects for chargers at multifamily buildings and workplaces. And all of this is aimed at reaching customers who do not have access to home charging, with an emphasis on charging in disadvantaged communities.

The initial funding evolved into significant funding for medium and heavy duty chargers in response to Senate Bill 350, and really emphasized improving that air quality and disadvantaged communities I mentioned earlier. And then last year, the CPUC issued a decision authorizing 600 million until 2027 in ratepayer dollars in additional funding for chargers that would support medium duty and heavy duty fleets and individual drivers that might not have access to home charging via the multifamily chargers and public chargers.

The CPUC may extend this funding to $1 billion through 2029. And then finally, this decision really prioritizes equity to ensure that investments reach underserved communities that have lower levels of EV adoption, including tribal communities. The program reserves 65% of funds for investments in underserved communities and provides higher rebates to multifamily buildings with the majority of Low income residents living there. So with that, I'll conclude my presentation and turn it over to Director Gutierrez. Hello.

I also have a slide deck wait for it to be pulled up. In the meantime, I can start off and introduce myself. Thank you for having me here today. My name is Alicia Gutierrez. I'm the Director of the Energy Assessments Division at the California Energy Commission. As Director Tessfai mentioned, there are numerous and ongoing coordination efforts around planning for widescale adoption of electric vehicles in the buildout of infrastructure.

To support these vehicles, I'll be covering some of the key efforts being led out of the CEC to support broader energy planning. As the state embarks on economywide decarbonization and a transition to clean energy that is both reliable and affordable for Californians, our leaders agree that it's imperative that we meet our decarbonization goals to stave off more extreme climate change. Climate change is the big X factor in energy planning, impacting both demand and the availability of supply resources.

In fact, climate change is making it harder to combat climate change due to sustained regional heat waves that are reaching new extremes. With transportation contributing to 50% of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. We must quickly decarbonize transportation while also building the grid of the future. This is not an either or situation. The CEC and sister agencies are committed to doing both and are constantly looking for ways to improve our analyses to plan for climate change. Next slide, please.

The CEC provides key insights on EVs and the grid with its annual demand forecast, which is part of the State's Integrated Energy Policy Report, or Iper. While the CEC leads the Iper, the report and policy recommendations are done in collaboration with sister agencies like the CPUC and CARB, and utilities and other stakeholders and vetted through public workshops held over several months. As Director Tess FAI showed, the California energy demand forecast is used for resource procurement, transmission planning and distribution planning.

The purpose of our demand forecast scenarios is to help identify different future deployments so utilities can better plan for reliability. And as a last resort, under extreme conditions, we resort to load shed and ask Californians to charge in off peak times. But ultimately our goal is to use electric vehicles to put electrons back on the grid. There's strong potential for supporting grid reliability and customers with properly controlled vehicle charging and discharging.

With regard to how we develop the California demand forecast, the CEC forecasts the vehicles expected based on carbon, other policies, regulations and incentives, and then estimates their energy demand. This chart highlights the impacts of adapting our forecast over time due to evolving planning needs. Each line in this chart is the forecasted net peak demand for California ISO region from previous Iper forecasts going back to 2018. Since 2018, each subsequent forecast has had an increase in forecasted net peak demand due to various changes.

Most recently we incorporated CARB's Advanced Clean Cars Two and Advanced Clean Fleets regulations in the 2021 Additional Transportation electrification scenario, which is the green Dashed Line and those were also included in the 2022 Iper forecast, which is the Orange Line. Those regulations account for the majority of the increase in the net peak demand from the 2021 Iper forecast. In 2021, we also updated the Peak Normalization process, where we sampled recent years in the 30 year historical weather record more frequently to better capture climate change.

Another notable observation from the 2018 Iper and to the 2022 Iper is that behind the meter, solar PV capacity has increased. This has shifted the net peak hour from hour 17 to hour 19, when solar production tapers off for the day. And lastly, all this is entangled with growth in the underlying baseline consumption forecast built from economic, demographic and rate projections. Next slide, please. This slide shows the forecasted demand from EVs in the year 2030.

In 2030, we forecast 7.1 million passenger EVs and anticipate about 170,000 medium duty heavy duty EVs. Today, EVs represent less than 1% of peak load, which is four to 09:00 p.m.. In 2030, we anticipate that EVs will make up less than 5% of peak load demand and about 10% of annual electricity use. The CEC also does load bus analysis with the results of the forecast to see how the load is distributed at the substation level.

You can also see the projected total generation in 2030 through the hours of the day indicated by the dotted black line. In 2030, we expect nearly 15,000 battery capacity to serve net peak, an additional 15,000 solar nameplate capacity and 3200 combined. Geothermal, biogas and out of state. Wind. Director Test Fight described some of the load management tools we will use to mitigate the impacts of EV charging.

We can see in this graph that EV owners respond to grid management strategies such as time of use rates and demonstrate flexibility in when they charge to take advantage of lower rates, reducing the grid impact we might otherwise see. The charging pattern reflects consumers desire to save money and models how they would target their charging to Low cost and convenient times. Advancements in vehicle grid integration also hold promise to mitigating the impacts of EV charging and providing benefits to the grid.

CEC believes that bi directional charging can be harnessed to provide greater grid reliability and customer benefit. However, the state needs to evaluate different strategies to control charging and discharging to maximize benefit of EVs and minimize any negative impacts. CEC called this out as a need in last year's Clean Energy Reliability Investment Plan as one of the many actions that can be taken to support diversification of demand side resources.

To provide reliability support in May of this year, the CEC also adopted a load flexibility goal of 7000 MW by 2030. Load flexibility is the capability to shift or shed electric load or demand away from times when electricity is expensive, polluting and scarce to times when it's inexpensive, clean and plentiful. Beyond the load flexibility goal, there is even more potential in vehicle grid integration. Next slide.

As the state agencies work to plan for and build out the grid to accommodate EVs, sustained investment in programs like the Clean Transportation Program and Epic are critical. These programs are key to advancing the technologies, tools and strategies needed to manage the load from EVs and tap into their potential to make our grid more resilient. The Clean Transportation Program has been a cornerstone in making California a leader in EV adoption. In quarter two of this year, 25% of new vehicle sales were ZEVs.

We are at an inflection point and it's critical now more than ever that we have a stable, ongoing, predictable funding source. Importantly, these funding programs are essential to ensuring we create an equitable transition so all Californians have access to infrastructure and ZEVs. The Clean Transportation Program targets having at least 50% of its investments go toward benefiting Low income and disadvantaged communities.

CEC is also coordinating with sister agencies and...on resource planning to determine how much and what types of renewable and firm resources we need to meet future hourly demand. Determining a planning reserve margin that appropriately considers our climate change and transmission planning both for the next ten years through transmission planning process and also the 20 year time. Horizon to align with planning scenarios developed through SB 100. Finally, the 2023 Iper is focused on strategies to accelerate connection of clean resources. Like EV chargers.

The Iper will catalog the ongoing efforts across agencies to improve connection processes and timelines and emphasize the importance of tracking progress and providing more transparency into energization and interconnection processes. The final report will include recommendations spanning planning, policy and technology deployment strategies that can help bring the needed resources and delivery capacity online rapidly and efficiently. That concludes my opening remarks. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, Members of the committee. My name is Román Partida-López. I'm the Senior Legal Counsel for Transportation Equity at the Greenlining Institute, and we work to build equitable transportation electrification policies that will accelerate emission reductions while simultaneously maximizing long-term public health and economic benefits for low income communities of color.

For those not familiar with the Greenlining Institute, we're a racial and economic equity advocacy organization fighting the lasting legacy of redlining and working towards a future where communities of color can build wealth, live in healthy places filled with economic opportunity, and are ready to meet the challenges posed by climate change. Today, I will be speaking to you all about the opportunities and challenges we must address in order to develop and deploy charging infrastructure equitably.

My colleagues have already outlined the various adoption and deployment ZEV goals and charging goals we have to meet in order to reach our climate goals. We've made significant strides these last few years, meeting various milestones ahead of schedule. For example, as has already been stated, 1.5 million EVs before the 2025 goal, 25% of our new vehicle sales are ZEVs now.

CARB, CEC, and TPC have also adopted strategies to build the roadmap to help us move in this direction and have made commitments to center equity to increase access for low-income and disadvantaged communities. CEC, for example, seeks to invest 50% of their funds, while CARB has stated that about 70% of their funds benefit priority populations. PUC was previously investing about 35% of their funds and has recently made a bigger commitment to invest 65% of their funds to benefit underserved communities.

However, with all of these commitments, we have a significant amount of work ahead of us to deliver on the promises to ensure an equitable path that increases access for all. Let's start first with some of the challenges. CEC has already outlined the charging needs that the state needs in order to meet our demand. PSC has also identified the amount of funding and projections needed for deployment of charging. Yet we still have lots of chargers that need to be approved, cited, installed, energized, and maintained.

We have billions of dollars of projects that still need to charge forward. We also know that 45% of Californians are renters, meaning there is a significant amount of work and collaboration needed to increase the number of chargers at multi-unit dwellings or other places besides residential housing. For those that are homeowners, especially those in older homes, which require additional support for panel upgrades or other type of upgrades, there is also a need for support, as some of these programs don't pay for, creating another barrier for them. We talk about wanting to see more public charging to make it easier for those that don't own or cannot charge in their place of residence, y et it is three to four times more expensive to charge in public than at home. There is also a limited alignment between where we focus vehicle incentives and where charging investments are happening.

There's a need to develop a workforce that reflects the communities where these chargers are being installed and maintained. And let's also not forget about the need to deploy charging to support trucks, buses, port equipment, which we know have significant air quality implications for frontline communities. As I mentioned, we have a lot of work in front of us, especially if we are committed to ensuring our most vulnerable are not left behind.

Now, with all that in mind, I am optimistic and have hope that we can address these challenges in a timely manner. But we must do so effectively and intentionally. We must make sure we have all the right partners at the table and that we develop a community driven process that provides communities with the opportunity to inform and decide how and where deployment happens.

We have developed a set of principles to help guide leadership agencies and other stakeholders through this process and the following four principles we hope can help in the planning and in the development of policies that will ensure we are providing direct, measurable and meaningful benefits to frontline and priority populations. So first we must be clear and define what we mean when we say equity, benefits and accompanying metrics and outcomes. Agencies need to clearly state what they mean when they say equity and who they are prioritizing with these investments. Equity is not just a buzzword. It must be a practice reflected not just through words, but through actions, support, prioritization and investments in communities that have the biggest barriers and challenges. Agencies also need to leverage all the local work that's been happening, especially when it comes to community plans like AB 617 community emission reduction plans that have been developed through a community driven process and identify investments in transportation electrification.

For years, this has been a request to align the work that's been happening on the ground with the investments that are happening at the state level to advance the goals of local communities quicker. This also means moving away from this existing first come, first serve or competitive process to deploying these investments. As this has been identified as an inequitable approach that only reinforces the status quo that those that have access to information and resources have access to deployment and investment.

We must be more targeted and intentional with our investment. We also need to identify where charging is needed by outlining all the charging deserts that we have and work with community groups or other local stakeholders to explore what charging deployment might look like and what type of benefits and copenenefits they want to see. Which brings me to my second point benefits should serve people and not just places.

It is easy, but also counterproductive to disseminate funding and deploy infrastructure in census tracks that are classified as disadvantaged communities and leave it at that. If we want to make equity real and maximize the limited state resources that we have, we must think more holistically and ensure we're providing cleaner air training, access to jobs, and other economic opportunities. Deployment of resources in a geographic region on its own is not enough.

With this in mind, we need agencies to help support and fill the gaps not covered by private industry by being intentional and targeted with the use of state and/or ratepayer funds. Third, we must create opportunities for wealth building and facilitate access to the new green economy. To create a more just economy, we must reimagine the benefits of community infrastructure investments to include economic development opportunities, local hiring and other benefit agreements for communities impacted by the legacies of redlining, disinvestment, and systemic racism.

And lastly, climate and resiliency planning should prioritize people and not just property. These last few days we've seen drastic climate conditions, from fires here in the north to hurricane and tropical storms in the south, all within the same week. We need to plan ahead and ensure that as we deploy more charging and EVs, that we're doing so in a way that supports communities within extreme weather conditions.

In closing, I want to leave you with the following: PolicyLink, along with documented advocacy from the disabled community, talked about the curb cut effect. Sidewalk curb cuts, which were not a standard development, required advocacy to provide these indentations, to allow for those in wheelchairs to access sidewalks. These curb cuts in turn allowed for additional benefits for delivery workers, families with strollers, and others. So when we develop policies and programs designed to benefit our most vulnerable populations, we develop benefits for all.

Until we approach this work in a similar fashion, with intentionality empathy and commitment, we will not meet our goals and will only exacerbate inequities and unnecessary burdens for those that we're supposed to be supporting first. Thank you for your time and I look forward to the discussion.

Thank you very much, Chair Schiavo and all the Members here today. My name is Duncan Callaway. I'm an associate professor at UC Berkeley and chair of the Energy and Resources Group. I very much appreciate this opportunity to talk about some of the infrastructure challenges and opportunities that I see to California's goals to electrify its transportation system. And today I'd like to talk to you about the pressing need to change how our utilities plan and rebuild the grid to address these electrification goals.

So you can go to the next slide. As we've been discussing with this simple schematic of the grid, all components of our grid need to change, from generation to transmission to distribution. Today I'd like to talk to you about the focus of my research, that is, distribution systems the last mile of the grid. So if you look at this figure on the right, you can see that there are substations connected to feeders that go out to serve electrical customers.

In California, we have several thousand substations, each serving a few thousand customers. And we have over 10,000 electricity feeders that serve a few hundred to a few thousand customers. If we think about distribution system planning, this is primarily done in a reactionary process. So there are three-year distribution planning processes that bring distribution projects into the plan within a three-year window, get approval and execute those projects.

One of the central questions that we've been asking in our research is given the transitions that we're hoping to cover, can the status quo distribution system planning process continue? So, if you go to the next slide, you can see a summary of some of our work.

So one of the key points that both our own work as well as others, including the Kevala study as part of the High DER proceeding sponsored by the CPUC, indicates that there is a significant need for buildout of our electricity distribution systems. Now, many studies focus very large financial investments and a lot of the focus has gone there.

When we have put these into context in our own work against the increased electricity demand those investments will enable, we think that the impact on ratepayers on a per kilowatt hour basis is likely to be small. However, the pace of work that these studies imply is unprecedented and they pose a number of important questions.

So if you look at the top figure in a study that we've done for Pacific Gas and Electric, focusing out on the 2050 timescale, you can see that across a number of different scenarios, nearly every single one of PG&E's 3,000 distribution feeders will need to be upgraded to reach our clean electricity transportation goals. If you look down at the second figure, we can see what that implies at an average pace of work across a number of different timescales.

So if you just focus on the 2030 timescale, our estimate suggests that upwards of about 200 distribution feeders will need to be upgraded on a per year basis. This is compared against a historical rate of work of about 60 to 70 distribution feeder projects per year. So the question I think that this poses is can distribution equipment, supply chains deliver capacity at the necessary rate? Is our utility workforce ready to design and build those projects?

And furthermore, another question I think is will all communities have equal access as we build out distribution system infrastructure? So if you go to the next slide, the point that I want to make on this slide is that if workforce and supply chains cannot deliver, then communities of color may be the most heavily impacted.

So if you look at that figure on the right, I'm not asking you to look at any one of the individual colors in this map, but it's a map of our own work from Southern California, LA and Orange counties. The colors here represent the capacity of distribution grids to accommodate new electricity load. So you can see it's extremely heterogeneous spatially.

And when we look at how that spatial variability correlates with communities, what we see is that communities with increasing amounts of Black-identifying residents and increasing amounts of Latinx-identifying residents on average have less distribution system capacity for electrifying their loads. This is not to suggest that they cannot electrify their loads in small parts today, but it suggests that as we go forward with our goals, there could be major obstacles.

It also suggests that historical distribution planning processes have not served these communities and set them up for electrification. So if you go to the next slide, I want to talk about a few solutions. So the first thing that we have seen in our own work is that distribution grid focused smart charging can delay the need to build new capacity.

So this chart is showing you on the horizontal axis some different levels of flexibility in charging, enabling electric vehicles to charge during times when there is distribution system capacity available. So you can see that, let's look at the 2030 line. You can see that we can go from needing 1500 projects all the way out to only 1000 projects on that timescale if we have enough flexibility.

So I think the take home point here is that we need to double down and continue to accelerate development of hardware and software and customer engagement in the extreme near term to enable reducing the number of projects that we need to meet these goals. Another point that I want to make is that longer term distribution planning tools need to be put in place to enable proactive buildout.

So what I mean here is that utilities, I think need to give very clear plans on at least a ten year timescale to explain, for distribution system capacity, what is their plan for managing a workforce and managing a supply chain that will enable equitable build out of distribution grid capacity so that we can meet our clean energy goals? So in closing, I'd just like to say that I think that the distribution system impacts are a critical impediment to transportation electrification.

I think we have clear paths to ensure that Californians won't get caught without sufficient grade capacity. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Geraghty.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Madam chair, vice Chairman and Members of the committee. My name is Kevin Geraghty, I am the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Safety Officer for San Diego Gas & Electric Company and I'm pleased to appear before you today to provide SDG&E's perspective on the state of electric vehicle charging in California and the infrastructure needed to support these efforts.

SDG&E is a regulated public utility that serves about 3.7 million people in San Diego and Southern Orange counties. Our service area spans over 4000 sq mi and our system includes over 1800 miles of transmission lines and 17,000 miles of distribution lines, 62% of which are underground. We have extensive experience with planning, permitting, constructing and maintaining safe and reliable electric infrastructure throughout the communities we serve, which includes some of the state's most fire-prone and environmentally sensitive areas.

California has set ambitious climate goals to achieve economywide carbon neutrality by 2045, and the question before us today is how we work together to reach these goals? The volume of electricity that must be delivered to customers to meet our climate goals is unprecedented. We must be proactive. Next slide please. Comparing the 2019 IEPR transportation electrification components to the 2022 IEPR transportation electrification components shows a significant increase in the 2022 IEPR.

SDG&E was initially planning for the 2019 CEC IEPR Transportation Electrification scenario as part of its current GRC. The 2022 Transportation Electrification scenario is now quite a bit more reflective of what SDG&E will actually faced, and it is more difficult to accommodate that new load demand without additional funding.

In comparing the year 2030 of the two IEPR forecasts, there could be a need of approximately 160 transportation electrification load growth that SDG&E had not originally planned for, and I can share you with you today on the reasonable projects that I expect to move forward in the near term. is far more than 160 MW. large load requires longer lead time to upgrade the grid to serve long lead time projects such as new substations requiring land procurement and existing substations growth need to be quickly initiated now to ensure we are ready to serve the load in 2030. The current four-year planning and cost recovery model is not flexible enough.

In fact, if the utility were to prioritize GRC approved dollars in unanticipated growth, such as from transportation electrification, the utility may no longer have funding to perform the safety and reliability work that may have been approved in a GRC, and that is just not an acceptable trade off in a climate-vulnerable area like San Diego.

The current regulatory GRC process is not designed to adapt to the scope, size, rapid change and unpredictable nature of where electric demand will increase as a result of changing consumer behavior, like transportation and building electrification. Decarbonization is coming at us from all angles, impacting consumers, developers and builders. The IOUs have one opportunity every four years in the GRC to use forecast data to inform grid investments to safely and reliably serve our customers.

Without a new, clear and substantial flexible cost recovery mechanism to allow the IOUs to quickly to pivot and respond, we will not have the resources to keep pace with grid transformation needs through 2045. Next slide please. SDG&E's Path to Net Zero study was the first publicly available analysis at the time to model California decarbonization through 2045 in a reliability focused way. In other words, can we deliver the clean energy and hold the grid together?

The study projected that in SDG&E service territory, electricity consumption doubles from 2020 to 2045, primarily driven by electric transportation needs. In SDG&E service area, we expect to see significant growth in zero emission vehicle adoption from fewer than 100,000 in 2020 to about 3.4 million by 2045. And regarding that charging infrastructure, San Diego County had 7000 EV chargers in 2020. SDG&E's Path to Net Zero predicts by 2030 we could see 180,000 chargers, and by 2045 we could see 640,000 chargers.

SDG&E continues to receive requests for DC fast charging infrastructure, ranging from six chargers up to 64 chargers per site. And that is just what we have in the queue today. We're hearing even bigger connections and to just kind of give characterize what one of those chargers means. One of those chargers is the equivalent of about 50 home demands. So for about every 40 of those chargers, it's the equivalent of a master plan community--2000 homes. Today, when we think about a 2000 home master plan development, we know about a year's in advance. Literally today, folks that want to build this infrastructure can knock on our door and want it within a year. It's something that we need to change and prepare for, and we need to move more quickly and proactively. Next slide, please. CAISO's new transmission plan identifies 45 projects for system expansion and upgrades in the next ten years. The largest tranche of new transmission in CAISO's planning history. And it's well needed.

And this does not account for the transmission needed over the longer term to access resources like offshore wind. It can take ten to 15 years or longer to forecast customer demand, plan the system, and construct this type of infrastructure. And the biggest challenge in developing transmission infrastructure quickly is the complex and lengthy permitting environmental review process, particularly for these long linear facilities which often cross many jurisdictions.

We know this really well, from I think we were probably the last utility to build a lengthy 500 KV line in our state. That was the Sunrise Powerlink. It was about 1000 power originating out of our Imperial Valley substation, traveling 120 miles to San Diego. The environmental review and permitting process started in 2004. It took nearly five years to complete. There were several years of litigation at both the state and federal lines.

It only took 21 months to build the line, so building them is not the challenge. Next slide, please. In conclusion, SDG&E is grateful for the work being done by our legislators at the state and federal level, the Governor's office, and across the various agencies that are responsible for planning and implementing California's energy transition. And we appreciate the various efforts underway to expedite and streamline the process of planning and building electric transmission and distribution.

Regarding transmission, we'd like to see the CPUC sequel and permitting processes modernized, especially for the transmission line projects that are needed to support clean energy transition. This includes requiring a presumption of need for a CAISO-approved transmission project and limiting the range of project alternatives to those that meet the objectives of the CAISO-approved transmission project. We believe that expediting the eminent domain process and expanding rights of ways would reduce project timelines.

Regarding distribution infrastructure, a significant roadblock for electric utilities is that we do not operate under a 'build it and they will come' environment. We operate under a 'build it when they come.' This needs to change if utilities are going to be ready to quickly energize the significant transportation electrification load that will be forthcoming to support state goals. Balancing accounts are established for costs that the utility and the regulator cannot reasonably forecast for a future period.

That is why a mechanism like a two way balancing account with a material and clear level of incrementality must be in effect through 2045. The balancing account gives utilities a level of nimbleness to respond to electrification driven capacity, especially transportation electrification needs. Senate Bill 410 attempts to take a positive step in this direction. However, it may still fall short without more leadership and clarity related to its duration and magnitude and the need for unanticipated electrification balancing accounts.

And I do not mean to only challenge the Legislature. SDG&E has established an Electrification Risk Management Committee that I chair in order to evaluate our existing processes, structure, and procedures to ensure we are positioning ourselves to support the transition to electrification of the transportation sector. And many times in that committee to make the very difficult decisions that we anticipate, do we use GRC funds on unanticipated, unplanned-for new demand that is not in that GRC?

Or do we look at our safety and reliability investment that that GRC anticipated and improved? We at the utility need to shift from a mindset of low to no growth incrementality that has ruled for decades and has been effective, to a growth mindset. We see opportunities to promote a clean, safe, reliable energy future while protecting the environmental resources and community values. And we stand ready to work with you to achieve the state's goals for the benefit of future generations.

But we are all challenged to adopt the right, no regrets approach to enable this rapid transition. That concludes my testimony. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Fernandez.

Thank you, Chair, Members of the committee and staff. My name is Rocky Fernandez. I'm the Director of Policy for the Center for Sustainable Energy, or CSE. CSE is a national nonprofit with a simple mission: decarbonize. We accelerate adoption of zero-emission transportation and distributed energy through effective and equitable, data-driven, software enabled program design and administration. We fund everything we do with the revenue we earn from the contracts we compete for in the open market.

CSE administers clean energy and transportation incentive programs valued at over $4.8 billion for governments, utilities, and the private sector across the US, including large scale EV charging incentive programs in multiple states valued at over $560,000,000. This includes the largest statewide EV charging infrastructure program in the US: The California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project, or CALeVIP. That's why we're here today. A little bit about the process--I'd like to take a moment about how that works.

The money flow for CALeVIP starts right here in the Legislature through the Clean Transportation program authorized by AB 118 and AB 8. The state's investment in our EV infrastructure is vital to the continued expansion of vehicle electrification and contributes to the significant increase in market share for new EV purchases by, among other things, reducing so-called range anxiety. Furthermore, these public investments are a necessary pillar in meeting California's equity goals.

The CALeVIP project has been funded by two separate grants authorized by the Energy Commission under the Clean Transportation Program. CSE was awarded these grants through a competitive solicitation process held by the Energy Commission. Upon award, CSE and the Energy Commission collaborated to design the programs to achieve important state goals as set by the Legislature.

The first grant, Block Grant One, or BG One, was launched in late 2017 in the amount of $226,000,000, and it funded the creation and Administration of 13 incentive projects in 36 counties. The second grant is now underway. Block Grant Two, or BG Two. CSE was awarded this program in December 2021, with the first $30 million project launched this past January.

With a second project scheduled to commence this September 13, with a total rebate funding of $38 million. BG One helped deploy approximately 4000 charters, with thousands of additional charters in the pipeline, and they're being deployed now as we speak, through August 2025. Of the total funds reserved, 41.7% have been reserved for disadvantaged community or low-income community sites.

The methodologies used to disperse funds under Block Grant One and Block Grant Two differ substantially, not just reflecting the different maturity levels of the charging market, but also embracing the lessons learned from Block Grant One. For reference, when Block Grant One was launched in December 2017, the EV share of all new car sales was a very modest 4.29%, compared to the approximately 25% share in quarter two of this year.

The design of Block Grant Two, which CSE created in collaboration with the Energy Commission, focuses on applicants likely to succeed in timely charging deployment. It does this by issuing incentives in accordance with an applicant tiering system based on demonstrated readiness and through use of a progressive progress management system that tracks milestones, subjects applicants to cancellations, and tracks delays. Applicants that provide both an approved utility design and an issued building permit at the time of application filing are awarded tier one status, or ready to build.

Applicants with the final utility design in hand and a permit application are in tier-two, or design approved. And applicants with final utility design in progress and permit application in receive tier three, or design in progress status. To ready the market for the launch of a project, a webinar is held to describe this tiered system to applicants and all the other eligibility requirements, and the open and closed dates of the windows are well advertised.

A bit about equity. Program design that equitably delivers the value of clean energy is core to CSE's mission to decarbonize. Equity was served in Block Grant One through the reservation of 41.7% of funds for deployment in disadvantaged and low-income communities and through engaging community based organizations to execute the community level education. Block Grant Two brings an even more intense focus on delivering on disadvantaged and low-income communities.

Working with our CBO partners, CSE works with mapping tools that identify and rank eligible sites based off the community's objectives and equity needs. This saves time and effort that can be repurposed into site and provider engagement and securing utility design and permitting, increasing the percentage of applications reaching Tier One status during the window. Finally, Block Grant Two exclusively funds direct current fast chargers with a strong emphasis on sites in disadvantaged and low-income communities. Let's talk about delays.

Historically, applicants in Block Grant One experienced significant delay in obtaining utility service design approvals and building permits from the applicable jurisdictions. Under the Construction Progress Tracker software platform deployed in Block Grant Two, CSE will better track deployment delays, including those service utility, service design approvals and building permit delays.

These delays will be quantified on a project basis and categorized by utility and jurisdiction, providing the factual detail necessary to design solutions that solve those deployment challenges and ensure that we get the maximum value from this investment of taxpayer funds. Additional electric, utility and jurisdictional resources will be very important, especially as we seek to accelerate infrastructure deployment to keep up with the mass market consumer adoption that we see skyrocketing.

Solutions to delay could include the augmentation of utility and agency permitting staff with third party experts that conduct the necessary approval review, which would then be submitted for expedited final approval by in-house utility or agency staff. We look forward to presenting more of this data and resolving these delays as CALeVIP 2.0 implementation continues. We thank you for your time, happy to answer any questions.

I appreciate everyone being here today and sharing the important information. I felt like the construction sound effects in the background of impending doom was a little bit scary sound effect to go with the conversation that we're having.

But I appreciate all the work that's happening because clearly we have a big project ahead of us and I know it's going to take everyone working together and being innovative and reimagining how we do this work to make sure that we make these goals. So thank you so much. I wanted to turn it over to my colleagues. And community Members, if they have questions, comments, they'd like to--Mr. Muratsuchi.

Submitted to the committee, discusses different studies trying to assess the potential cost impact on ratepayers from EV charging buildout. It cites a 2019 study from the Boston Consulting Group finding that the cost of the investments outweighed the additional utility revenue revenue and that it would have the net result of increasing costs on electricity rates. And then it also cites a different study put out by the Natural Resources Defense Council from 2022 finding a net effect of decreasing rates across the custom base.

What is the PC's projection in terms of the overall impact of EV charging buildout on ratepayers?

Thank you, Assembly Member Muratsuchi. So, a couple of things there. One, in the very long term, there may be downward pressure on electric rates due to increased electrification, both from buildings and electric vehicles. That is still quite far into the future. We'll have to see costs come down on electric vehicles, wider scale deployment. But the concept there is related to spreading out some of the fixed costs over greater sales that reduces the rate.

But again, I do want to emphasize that that is further down the road. And then also, part of your comment had to do with some of the studies about the overall costs. And there's the 2019 study. The Commission had worked with a consultant to put out a draft study that's been out for comment, that also has large numbers and that's out for comment. So I think through that comment process we'll be able to crystallize maybe a bit more about those study costs.

And so I mentioned that, and then also Mr. Callaway also mentioned those studies as well. So I think that there are more studies out now that are looking at this with the updated information of state requirements for, for example, electric vehicle regulations. And so I think looking at 2019 to today or last year when we were working on these studies, we need to take into account both those transportation electrification regulations that are in place as well as building electrification goals.

And so that might increase the number, but these are the regulations that our Legislature that we are working so hard to meet those requirements. And so again, I think in the long term there might be some downward pressure on rates, but I agree that there are going to be very significant costs until then.

And we need to be enhancing our planning processes and also making sure that we have very secure oversight over the costs that the utilities are expending to make sure that we're able to balance those and manage costs for ratepayers.

Thank you. Mr. Callaway, Ms. Tesfai referred to you, I mean, your studies. Would you concur with that overall assessment upfront enormous costs, perhaps over the long term economic dynamics leading to lower ratepayer costs?

Yeah, I think that's a I fully agree with Ms.. Tesfai. I believe that the costs that are incurred in the short run do depend on how we proceed. The cost will be large, but there are opportunities for cost containment, both in terms of PUC oversight, but also ensuring that we don't find ourselves as coming back to some of my key points in situations where there's tremendous pressure on supply chains to deliver the equipment that's needed to do these projects.

I also strongly believe that although our analysis suggests that ultimately, virtually all distribution infrastructure will need upgrades, we can do it in a way that mitigates the size of the upgrades and spreads it over time if we can couple that with smart electric vehicle charging.

All right, thank you. And then, Ms. Tesfai, your last slide shows a $2.15 billion charger and Make-Ready IOU ratepayer funding authorization from 2016 to 2027. That's the money that would go for EV charging stations as well as the supporting infrastructure?

So this would be for EV charging, what we call Make-Ready infrastructure for the chargers. This number does not include the distribution system capacity upgrades that Mr. Callaway and I have been talking about, but this is going towards the actual charging infrastructure itself.

So there's been a lot of hope and talk about the President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act as well as the Infrastructure Act, the funds that California hopes to receive from those two major federal pots of money. Can you give an estimate as to how much California expects to draw down for the comparable EV charging infrastructure that you cite for the $2.15 billion? Compared to that, how much can we expect from the federal government?

So that is the separate program, the Nevi program, and actually, our sister agency, the California Energy Commission, is the lead on working on the deployment of that and interacting with our federal partners on that. So, if I may, I believe we have Director Hannon Rasool here, who's managing that program.

Hi.

Good afternoon. Yeah, from the federal program, we're going to get 384,000,000 over five years in formula funding from that pot of 5 billion. There's another 2.5 billion available as well. That's competitive funding. They opened up the first 700 million earlier this year. 350,000,000 for corridor charging and 350,000,000 for community charging. California, Oregon, and Washington applied for a joint application to electrify both electric and hydrogen infrastructure up and down the I-5 from Canada to Mexico, also connecting ports to distribution centers as well.

So that application is currently in front of the Feds. And hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll get some of that funding as well.

Okay, but just in terms of trying to get a perspective of the relative size of the pots of money, I mean, I'm hearing for ratepayer funding, it's over $2 billion from the federal government. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes, exactly. Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Mr. Connolly.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. And, Chair, thank you for bringing this select committee together. Excited to be on it. I have a series of questions on the grid and then also just kind of the state of charging. Is the CPUC currently doing anything to encourage adoption of bidirectional charging? And if you can talk a little bit about that.

Yes, thank you for that. So the CPUC does have a number of pathways set up to create opportunities for bidirectional charging. A couple that I mentioned in my presentation are occurring within our demand flexibility proceeding. So it's not just focused on electric vehicles, but it's focused on all types of electrification in buildings. And so this will allow for us to leverage bidirectional charging to use electric vehicles, like Director Gutierrez said, as a resource on the grid.

And so just thinking about kind of what we have going on currently in our emergency load reduction program, there is an aggregation option for electric vehicles for us to be able to leverage them in an emergency scenario, to be able to go off and charge during that critical time. And we really think that there's going to be greater opportunities for that as we enhance the technologies. And that was something that was mentioned in Mr. Callaway's presentation as well.

It's not just going to require hardware, but also software in order to be able to send signals from the grid to different distributed energy resources to signal to this is the time to discharge onto the grid and customers can actually make some credits back on their bills through that. So it enhances affordability as well.

Excellent. Excited about that. Wanted to talk about the status of heavy-duty EV adoption. I know there's still emergence or questions about what technology ultimately will service that sector of the market, but in terms of vehicles and charging stations, what is the status of heavy-duty EV adoption and how do we anticipate the load of heavy-duty charging impacting the grid?

Yeah, so I'll say a few things, just talking about planning processes and interagency coordination, and then I want to give an opportunity for my colleague from the Energy Commission to share a little bit more information as well, in particular with the chargers.

So I highlighted that in May of this year, the CPUC along with several sister agencies, Air Resources Board, GoBiz, Energy Commission, Transportation Commission, CalSTA, hoping I'm not forgetting one, but those are know, signed a statement of intent in order to publicly share our coordination activities. And then in May we launched what we call the FIP, which is the Freight Infrastructure Planning process.

And what we've observed is that for medium and heavy-duty charging, which I think you indicated, there's a higher level of infrastructure that's needed and a higher level of electricity that's needed to be able to serve that infrastructure. So sometimes it might even include a new substation that needs to be built. And so the freight Infrastructure planning process is creating a new way of forecasting that need and better integrating it into distribution system planning processes.

And part of the reason that we initiated it was really kind of the equity impacts of emissions from those types of vehicles that are constantly going, for example, from ports to distribution centers and impacting disadvantaged communities. So that's a bit more about the planning processes. And I wanted to give Director Rasool an opportunity to share a bit more about the Energy Commission's work in this area as well.

Yeah, so generally where we are right now is in a growth phase for this. As you mentioned, we're looking at electric and hydrogen. We have a report which anchors to the Advanced Clean Fleets regulation from CARB. So AB 2127 on the electric side, Senate Bill 643 on the hydrogen side. The first AB 2127 report showed we need approximately 157,000 chargers by 2030. That second iteration of that report in draft form should be out next couple of weeks, hopefully.

And then the first Senate 643 report will be out later this year. And so basically, we look at those regulations, we see time horizons on that, our modeling analysis anchors off that, and we look at the number of charges and hydrogen stations we need. And more and more, especially with ACF having passed, we are looking at how we can support that more directly. And it's a bit of a portfolio approach.

We have a block grant called Energize, which has multiple funding lanes--some focused on equity, some focused on speed--and then we supplement that with other funding solicitations focused on those regulations. So I'm hoping, let's say September-ish, we're going to open up a new grant funding opportunity, GFO. It's making the rounds internally to button that up. It'll actually focus on corridors. So again, electric and hydrogen corridors.

We realize in working with the Transportation Commission and carbon PUC, there's a recognition of we need to get those corridors going for drage vehicles pretty soon and then also build out depot charging. I actually worked at San Diego Gas & Electric for a number of years prior to the Energy Commission, and we worked on some projects for depot charging for UPS.

And a lot of these vehicles can charge on Level 2 chargers because they don't travel a lot during the day. They stop and go, go a handful of miles, can charge with level two overnight. You don't need DC fast chargers for like box trucks every time. And then semi-trucks, totally different animal.

Those are medium. Those are light-medium.

Yes, exactly. So in that whole span of medium-duty, heavy-duty vehicles that 2127 looks at, we look at different charging needs we need for depot charging, lower level, higher level, and then, as you mentioned, for en route, certainly higher power charges for that. Yeah.

Go ahead. If you have a follow up.

Just quick question on that. Are we looking, at as we get into--I'm US Army Transportation guy, tenure Army Sergeant. This is one of the biggest things that I haven't heard talked about when we start talking about fleets is weight ratios and what's that going to do to the other aspects of our infrastructure, our highways, our bridges and these other things. Because as we increase the weight of these vehicles, this is going to affect load capacities for bridges and other places in the infrastructure.

And I have not yet in ten years heard that discussed.

Yeah. Excuse me. That's actually outside the purview of Energy Commission.

Obviously it is for the further discussion for EVs, as we look at scaling up to cover, I mean light-duty makes total sense, because you're going into a distribution center that's going out, they're running routes within about an hour, 2 hours and coming back. That logistically makes sense. But for the heavier duty and the longer routes with the semi-trucks, it's definitely something that's got to be figured out. So I do appreciate that you're talking hydrogen.

I wanted to make one comment, and I can't speak for our other agencies. But as part of the statement of intent, we included CalSTA, Caltrans. And so as we're doing our infrastructure planning for electric system build out and generation, that information can help inform know the agencies that have jurisdiction over those issues. And so it's ancillary to what we do at PUC, but I think it creates the ecosystem for them to better inform themselves on, what you're saying, a really key issue.

I'm always happy to work on a working group.

A few more questions turning to charges and I apologize if this has already been covered, but what is the general timeline for building Level 1 and Level 2 chargers or charging stations, i.e. How long does it generally take?

It can vary quite a bit. So one thing we learned from the block grants we're doing with CSE, the first block grant was first come, first serve. It was a different time back then in 2006, 2007, and we really want to encourage the market to apply to these. We found some issues, right? Permitting has been an issue. Interconnection energization has been an issue.

I was going to ask what are some of the main barriers as well?

Absolutely. I think those are still the ones we've been hearing about them for a while, but they're still the ones we have to crack is permitting can be fairly fragmented. There's so many jurisdictions. I think the two bills which have passed over the last number of years have certainly helped. And so I'm curious to see--and GoBiz is leading that--but I'm curious to see how those play out over time, and they're doing a really nice job working with authorities having jurisdiction on that.

I still think that Energization and interconnection is a long lead time thing for us, and so just making sure that we have the ability to move those forward. It is something we learned and implemented in Block Grant Two. And so instead of doing first come first serve, we've tiered the project. So Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, as he mentioned, and really trying to encourage those ones that can move quickly.

I will note that for equity purposes, we know that the block grant is not going to be great for everyone because we want projects that are a little more shovel ready. So we supplement that with a lot of other grant funding opportunities we run in house. We have those focused on multi unit dwellings. We're going to release our second one on rural communities coming up. Also have those for high-mileage vehicles. So I don't think one solicitation is going to solve all of it.

Under the Clean Transportation Program, we run several solicitations to target those different areas.

Yeah, in fact, you anticipated my next question, and that is really, how is the state ensuring that EV infrastructure is installed on an equitable basis around the state, recognizing different communities?

Yeah, we think about this a lot. It's a tough one, and it's so important to get right. So right now we just closed one on multi-unit dwellings. We'll do a third iteration of that next year. We have a rural community one that hopefully comes out later this year, could squeeze into next year as well. And then we do these DC Fast charger ones that are meant to complement both the CSE block grant.

We have a CALSTART block grant, the NEVI funding, and these are more meant to be focused on communities as well. More like shopping centers near Walmart or Target or a grocery store as well. But they're challenging, and quite frankly, sometimes they cost more. But it's the right thing to do. We know that not every Level 2 charger is going to need the same state rebate. It's going to vary based upon the market segment.

Is it fair to say we're prioritizing, as a state--in terms of build out--in those areas?

Yeah, absolutely. I would say prioritizing in the fact that we've said we want to do 50% by location, and also realize that is not a satisfactory metric. We want to go further. So earlier this year, we started a process to see who benefit from these investments, going beyond just location. We've done several workshops and listening sessions.

We think we'll have a straw proposal out by the end of the year for public comment and then try to shore that up and start running that through our solicitations early next.

And then final question to the group: What are the main issues with the current regulatory framework for building EB infrastructure, and kind of what can the Legislature do to make it more effective?

You know, a couple that I would like to highlight. First, has to do with our distribution system planning process. Mr. Callaway also touched on this a bit, but what we have observed is that the current distribution system planning process is just, frankly, inadequate. What's being used by the investor owned utilities. We've had a number of stakeholder meetings over the last several months, over a dozen, and we've got that feedback. So we know it's definitely inadequate.

The Public Utilities Commission and the High Distributed Energy Resources Proceeding, we issued a new scoping memo on August 14 which really highlighted that we are going to be transforming the distribution planning process, and then we have a schedule that was set out in that scoping memo. So right now, we are working on a staff proposal that will be coming out in the next probably month or two that is going to be leveraging all of that information that we got from the Kevala study on electrification impact study. It's going to be highlighting the information that we got from those Stakeholder meetings to be transforming the distribution planning process, because we've heard it loud and clear from all of you. We've heard it from stakeholders. The way that the distribution system planning is occurring right now is inadequate and has to be changed.

Any others?

I'd just like to follow up--and I think it's important to engage the utilities on this question in that--the distribution planning process may actually be set up correctly for what it is and what it does. And it may be that an additional mechanism for identifying projects on a longer term basis could be layered on top of the existing short term distribution planning process. Today, the distribution planning process is something that's meant to identify and actually design and build projects, get their detailed cost estimates.

I don't think that we should be doing that for projects that are ten years from now. But I do think that we need to get a longer sort of telescope, if you will, to start thinking about what's coming, and how do we manage our--as I've been saying--workforce supply chain relationships, so that we know that when we enter into that three year distribution planning process, we'll be able to handle everything that comes.

I think we're all pointing around distribution planning. There's no question. I said it in my prepared notes. We've lived through incrementalism for a couple of decades in the state. We now have to move to growth. Before coming here three years ago, I was responsible for the fastest growing city in the country, Las Vegas, and we had a thing we always talked about we're building infrastructure for people that will be here three years from now, and they don't even know if they're going to be here.

So in other words, we have to build things ahead. We can do that in planning. But the other thing that's happening right now is the suddenness and the impact. As I said, we have a seven year outlook for a 4000-home master plan community literally could have Tesla knock on our door this week and say, I want that same load and I want it by the end of the year. That's the suddenness.

And so while we're thinking about our planning and optimizing and get efficiency with that, there's a suddenness now that we've got to address via just honestly through rate making process, balancing accounts, such that we can meet those needs.

Because those customers that are coming in for these very large infrastructures, they love the discussion of all the balancing on where we're going to get to, but they just need the projects built right now, and we have to study whether the grid can handle it and then build that infrastructure for them.

So just as we're looking at all our detailed planning and even thinking out in a couple of years, just recognize right now there is a suddenness to electrification in our small part of the world in San Diego, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of megawatts that we didn't even know a year ago have now showed up at our door. And it's just this planning process that we should go into shouldn't impede us from moving quickly to satisfy those demands.

If I just add something sorry, real quick here. I just wanted to uplift again the report that Mr. Callaway had mentioned earlier and the impacts that this distribution planning will have on low-income communities, and more specifically on Black and Brown communities that we know continue to bear the brunt of these disinvestments.

And so as we're continuing to have these discussions about planning, expediting the processes, moving away from a first come, first serve or even thinking about how we're prioritizing equity, I think we need to make sure that what we are doing is that the programs we're developing, the investments that we're making are intentional and targeted, right? We say, yes, we're prioritizing equity, for example and we're only seeing 50%, right? And yes, that is a good start and that's not equity, right? That's equality.

When we talk about equity, we want to see a stronger commitment from these agencies, knowing the barriers that we have in front of us, knowing the research that is out there and the impact that it will have on our communities if we don't do that work now and move quicker.

So I just want to make sure that we continue to have that at the forefront as we continue these discussions and we continue the planning and that we ask IOUs and we ask agencies to do better about ensuring that those barriers and those challenges are the first ones that we address.

And I was going to add that two things. One, through our progress tracker that we've implemented for Block Grant 2, we're going to be able to see a lot more of where these barriers are coming up on the utility side, agencies permitting side, any other delays that are coming up. So I think we're going to continue to get more robust information on what those challenges really are.

And then second, I wanted to point out that some of the other states that we work in are exploring or have implemented kind of third party augmentation of agency staff to go ahead and help out with some of those things because large cities, they probably have the staff to be able to churn out permits.

I mean, they probably don't, but they're a lot better at than some of the smaller places and jurisdictions that are really, really lacking for resources and I hear that a lot from jurisdictions on housing or EV infrastructure or things like that. So exploring some of that augmentation might be an option.

Other questions? No.

We're shooting for mid September, so staff reports written, draft regulations are written, going through the internal process and hope to have that out soon for public comment.

Okay. And that will be actually an analysis of uptime or that's how you're going to do it?

It's a bit different than that. Yeah, so we're doing a number of things. The AB 2061 report and regulations will focus specifically on reporting and record keeping of uptime and what the publicly funded and rate period funded infrastructure has to do from a reporting standpoint. That legislation also required an assessment starting in 2025 of uptime, not just for publicly or ratepayer funded, but the network at large. So we're aiming to get that out by 2025. If we can do it sooner, great.

But what we're doing now is a lot of the due diligence to put a good report forward. We actually entered into a contract with UC Davis, I want to say at our last business meeting, to do a three year study, field study of about 3600 chargers, which is a large enough sample size to get a sense of what's happening and really start figuring out where the failure points are. Because they're numerous, right, I mean, you had your story early on. I've faced the same thing.

I've driven from San Diego to Yosemite and...

Oh my gosh.

...some stops were better than others when it came to the network. But there's different failure points which can occur. It could be that the charger is not working as an uptime issue. It's just not getting power. There can be a charger which is getting power, but it still has a bad customer experience because there's an interoperability issue. That vehicle, be it the maker model versus that charger, is not speaking to one another. That's when I think you mentioned this as well. Plug in your charger, we have our little dog, we take her for a walk, we come back and we got nothing.

Right.

Like nothing happened. That's not an uptime issue. That's actually an interoperability issue, most likely. There's also concerns potentially with payment and other things. So that field study will go in and look at vintage. What year was that installed? Is it older charges? Are more recent charges having issues? What's the failure point of all that? Again, that'll be three year study. We'll start getting information much ahead of three years as early as hopefully end of this year, early next year. And that will feed into the 2025 assessment that was ordered through 2061.

So can you expand a little bit on what counts as uptime and what doesn't. Does the little lever on the top that's always broken off and you can never get it to lock and click and charge, that drives me insane. Does that count as uptime?

So I don't want to get too far ahead of the regs, but I will say my understanding, because we have some very clever engineers working on this, my understanding is that would still be uptime. It would still meet the 97% of uptime because it has electricity getting to the charger. Now, again, that's still a bad user experience. And we need to work on all.

Of that because you cannot charge.

Yeah. And so what we intend to do with this, though, is really use 2061 as a stepping stone to do this broader look at the driver experience, be it pursuant to 2061, or just going out there and doing the good work to figure out what's happening. Because every one of those issues is a problem, and we need to figure out how to solve for all of those.

So the line that you're drawing when you're saying what is uptime is, is it getting energy to the charger?

Correct.

And not energy to the car.

Exactly.

Which is probably what drivers care a little bit more.

Agreed. Agreed. And we comported with the uptime definition of the Feds from the NEVI. So we're trying to be consistent with that, but fully recognize that that is an insufficient measure of the driver experience. So we're actually looking to go further in the regulation, and that should come out here pretty soon.

I support you going further into that regulation, just for the record. Yes, Mr. Mathis.

I appreciate you bringing up the driver experience, because I think many of us are aware of was it, Ford CEO and his test drive of the Ford Lightning and his comments of not being too thrilled about the charging experience. So it's good to see that that is being taken into consideration. That's one of my biggest concerns being in a rural area is we see things like, okay, there's a Ford truck.

This is great because that's like 90% of the vehicles in my area, but what does that look like for charging and longevity, and how are guys going to be able to handle loads and weight? All these things go in there because, you know, a truck that's got a load isn't going to go as far as the truck that doesn't. So it's important that these things are looked at.

And I think too often, and I've said it quite a bit, is when we look at setting up electrification, when we talk about EVs, it's primarily a metropolitan discussion, and it's good to see that we're starting to talk about a little bit with freight's, good movement, but the rural communities often get left out of that. I know with hydrogen, there's a little bit of talk of the I-5 corridor and then ship to production and distribution sites.

But we've really got to look at how do you tie in these rural communities for this infrastructure because we are getting left pretty much hung out to dry. But then we're also, and we've seen the same thing with the electrification and the cutoffs in some of the Ag. production sites where they're required to meet a regulation, the utilities aren't even caught up to it and now they're in this quagmire where they're caught up in between.

And we need to make sure our rural communities don't get caught in that too. And I am very concerned about that, which is why I bring it up. So I want to make sure I appreciate you writing that down because we have people in some of the most disadvantaged areas in the entire state and country, frankly, that are getting left aside when it comes to this.

If I may comment on that, we are aware of that issue and have had some great conversations also with Secretary Ross bringing those issues directly to the leadership of the Public Utilities Commission so that we can make sure that we're addressing them. And so earlier I was talking about the freight infrastructure planning framework. We are actually going to be working with CARP to get a consultant to do a special case study as part of that related to those large agricultural loads.

They're not technically electric vehicles, but they're very significant loads, akin to medium and duty, heavy duty, really. And so that case study will be able to be focusing on a part of San Joaquin County. And Secretary Ross has made it very clear that there are members in the Ag community that are desperately trying to meet these regulations and we need to enable it.

The Ag community, please talk to her more. So because California has 408 commodities, so what works for one commodity does not necessarily work for the other. And in my area, like we're the citrus belt, you will see a tractor trailer pull up and you'll see a forklift on the ground and they're loading crates all day and then that truck is going to run it. But how do you charge that forklift and keep that forklift online?

This is why I'm a fan of hydrogen for these types of things because that works better there versus having to worry about like a mobile charging station. But you've got to look at those different aspects of how the logistics within those fields of operation function. So it's important that you have those conversations.

Yes.

Just add something really quick to this because the user experience is something that for us and our advocacy is something that we have to take into account. I mean, I was going to share an example, but I was under seven minute time bounce. I was like trying to get through that.

Well through the chair, hopefully.

But I remember an experience of someone that I spoke to who had purchased an EV, and this was several years ago, who had to charge at a local hotel because they didn't have any charging at their place of residence and it was an apartment complex. So they had to go to the hotel, charge their car, take a bus and then do that to be able to get that. And we've moved. This has been several years now and I think we've made progress in that.

But as we think about the user experience and the fact that tribal and rural communities obviously have different challenges. As we continue to develop these assessments, these plans, these frameworks and strategies to your point, the need to go out into those communities and have a deep discussion about what works for them, needs to be part of that process and then reflected in the plans that we develop to ensure that then we are then addressing the needs.

Because a solution for an urban area, metro area is definitely not the same as in rural or in a tribal community. Those needs and challenges are different. And as we continue to plan out, these general approaches or blanket approaches to deployment are not going to work and we're not going to meet our goals and we're not definitely going to ensure that everyone buys into this. So I think we need a more intentional and targeted process to be able to identify those gaps, identify them and then address them as we continue to work on this work.

No, I absolutely agree and I think I would recommend a boots on ground approach where you can actually go and kind of embed with those communities and see how they function on the day to day. And just quickly, since I have the mic, as we talk about the smart charging and the delays, I know there's conversation and I've heard this before of well, if we can just get people to charge during the middle of the day when there's not flex power.

And it's like but we also have to take in that consideration of what our habits are, what the work life is, what is the nine to five? Because people are going to get off work and they're going to pick up the kids and they're going to go home and they're going to plug in. That's just how our society operates and runs. So unless we start changing work cycles and things like that, you're going to hit those peaks and valleys.

And it's just part of what we have to face, because I've heard conversations like, oh, we just need to get them to charge at a different time. And it's like, are they going to get it off work early? Or how is this going to work? So it's important that we consider those things throughout.

I think that's a really very important point because I tend to think we think a lot about the commodity, the electron, and being able to be timely with it. But when you think about Tropical Storm Hilary, it's heading towards San Diego, right? Everybody has an electric vehicle. What do you think they're doing at that moment, when it's super hot, super humid, they're charging their car.

So distribution is also about the demand that...

Oh absolutely.

...over a long period of time, you may be able to manage and shift that around, but demand is capacity. And as we think about planning for the grid, we hope to be able to use it efficiently. But there still, to your point is that moment of demand that is unpredictable in life, and that's what we end up having to build for.

Yeah, I appreciate you bringing up the storm because my district, we dealt with the floods. And when I talk to my fire captains and we kind of joke and go, how do you feel about getting an electric fire truck to be able to go out and do switchwater rescue and floods? And they're like, there's no way in hell. That's literally what they tell me.

And so I think we have to be very careful because I know a lot of us will put in our budget request, like, oh, I need to get this new electric fire truck for my fire Department. And it's like, that's great until there's actually a disaster besides a fire, because they have to take that into the floods, they have to take that into those acclimate weather conditions where an electric vehicle isn't going to cut it. You're not going to roll an electric fire truck into deep water to save somebody from a flood event or a massive storm or you're just not going to go into that situation because you can't with that type of equipment.

We're beginning to look at that from a resiliency standpoint as well, because if you think some of our most vulnerable communities, mountainous areas...

Yeah, resilient is a great point for it.

...our wildfire areas. Already with our community resource centers, we actually bring in mobile large batteries to help community members that have EVs, but we can see that need growing. And then as we start thinking about how do we serve in a moment where it could be a winter storm, it could be fire weather, that we need resiliency out there for our own equipment. In a future where we are completely electrified, we are the first responders. Those large trucks that are getting out into the field have got to be able to be electrified 24/7.

But that goes into that space over here with where does hydrogen fit into this? Because we know per molecule per power, especially when you get into the heavier weight ratios. It just starts to make more sense anytime you start getting heavy duty into a truck fleet or higher, that hydrogen is kind of the safer bet for what you need to do and what those working classes are. Especially when you get into the off road and tractors and things like that.

Correct. That's the reason we're thinking resiliency centers. To be able to say, we don't know what that may look like in a few years, but we have to be able to serve our customers.

Because, I mean, the goal is zero emissions.

Correct.

But it's like, how do we get there for everybody, and how do we get there where it's safe and effective, and when disasters strike because it's California, we're going to get it. I mean, the same day we have a hurricane, we have an earthquake, I'm just waiting for the Sharknado. We're getting there.

But the resiliency aspect is huge on this because the technology just isn't there for those things and for the mountainous communities and the other rural communities and being able to make sure our first responders are able to get in when it does happen. We've got to think about this. Yeah, it's cool to be like, hey, yeah, we got an electric fire truck, but how good is that going to do you when you actually need it?

I wanted to just make a couple of comments, and I'm sure my colleague has additional information about hydrogen as well in those scenarios you were talking about. And the opportunities...

I'm not trying to, we're supposed to be talking about EVs. That's why I've been trying to be quiet about hydrogen. Hey, I could go a lot deeper and I think you all know that.

I did want to just share a number of the investments I was discussing are also going into workplace charging. So that, yes, someone should be able to charge at home and they will be able to. But in order to try and bring some of the costs down for charging by allowing for workplace charging, customers will be able to charge when their solar and electricity is much cheaper and while they're at work doing work. And then their vehicle will be charged when it's time to go home. And so that's just a way to try and reduce the cost of charging by leveraging times of day when electricity is most affordable.

Well, you see, that's a logical step because a lot of people, like a lot of our staff, live in apartment buildings. They may not have chargers. The apartment buildings aren't going to have that aspect. They could charge at work, go home, park it, and then have enough juice to get back.

Exactly.

Logistics.

And then the second thing is the Public Utilities Commission has authorized strategic use of microgrids for resiliency scenarios and that funding was authorized just earlier this year. And we are helping to incentivize looking at including charging infrastructure at those micro grids to enhance resiliency for communities.

If I could, while we're talking about vehicles and charging in different locations, one of the emerging, really challenging ones for us are parking structures. Think about event day parking structures, think about airports, think about redeveloped areas in our downtown area. The amount of on demand charging from these 2000, 3000 parking spot, whether it's a rental car center, whether a parking garage, is massive, right.

The ability for somebody to park for an event, want to be able to plug in, get their car charged, you're talking orders of magnitude of tens of megawatts, right, to be able to demand for a very short period of time. But the reality is the grid has to be able to handle it. Sure, they're not at their house, they're not using their power there.

Could you say that last part again?

Well, sometimes I talk before I think.

The grid has to be able to handle it.

The grid has to be able to handle. And then what I would tell you is that, yes, so somebody's moved from their house. Now they've parked their car and their load or demands that their house has gone down, it doesn't matter. Their demand shifted to where they're at now. It's in that garage and that grid's got to be able to handle it. That load there, that load at their house, or that load that they may be hitting as they're traveling up to LA.

Thank you. I'd just like to make a follow up comment about the workplace charging and habits. And I think that we're at a very unique opportunity here where people are beginning to develop new habits around how they energize their cars. Our habits now with gas cars is to go to a gas station. We are developing new habits such as perhaps as soon as you get home, you plug in and charge. But it doesn't have to be that way. It can be commercial charging, workplace charging.

So I think if we can look ahead and think about where we want charging to happen and how we make that so that it's equitable and occurring at the times that make sense for the grid, then perhaps we have an opportunity to lock in new habits that work well for our system. And I just want to amplify this point about workplace charging versus, let's say nighttime residential charging, because what we've seen in our own work is perhaps unsurprisingly, if we lean into both of those options, then for distribution system infrastructure capacity needs, at least you're spreading the energy demand out over more time of day. And so at least for a distribution system infrastructure, I'm not talking about transmission or generation infrastructure, we have the potential to manage the demand in a way that avoids some of the bottlenecks that we're concerned about.

Thank you. And I, yes. Final question.

My final thought. Do we have a cost analysis breakdown as we get to this and we talk about building it out and you're talking about the two different options, it's just one of those things. When I think of the grid as a whole, is it more cost effective to do all that building up and to try to figure all that out, or is it more cost effective to get more hydrogen online? Has anybody done an analysis to look at those side by side?

Because you're talking massive amounts of megawatts kilowatts, it starts building out a lot, but when you start really looking at it, there's so much more power that you have to build out. When you sit there and you go, well, is it just more cost effective to get more hydrogen online and then you're not having it so much with the electrification because everybody's power bills are going through the roof and it continues to go higher. And like you said, it's going to be a while till it goes down. And I think a lot of us would like to see a side by side at some point in time.

I haven't seen that, but I actually don't think it's an either or situation. We've invested both.

And again, I agree with not an either or, because the way I see it as a logistics guy is if I'm taking the kids to school, going to the grocery store, going to work, and I'm in town, electric totally makes sense. But if I'm going out of town, say I live in this city and I go here or I'm in the suburbs and I go here, then you want more options and more flexibility. I know our constituents are about fed up with power getting even more expensive every year. And so as we figure all this out, how do you balance out paychecks and bills and those things?

Yeah, no, it's a great question and again, I don't think it's neither or. We're looking at both electric and hydrogen. We've invested in both and there's a lot of dynamics to that. Right. Both technologies are getting better. Right. I think that's the thing. Neither one of these technologies is standing still. So we're investing in both. We're going to continue to monitor the market. I don't think it's going to be a one size fits all for all vehicle classes or all vocations. And so we'll continue to invest in both.

And I just want to say that I'm really glad that you're bringing up that issue of customer bills. It's front and center for the Public Utilities Commission. And so as we're working on the staff proposal, we're looking at addressing some of those issues, including innovative regulatory tools that allow for a reasonable amount of spending and cost that ratepayers are paying for.

But with the adequate amount of oversight, and we're working in house to create those tools right now and those regulatory mechanisms, because that adequate amount of oversight is going to be essential to keep us from breaking the bank on customers right now. And so that's front and center for the PUC.

I'm glad that it is, because when we talk about these other major problems, we talk about homeless in California, and this gets into a cost of living. And when you have parts of cost of living continuing to rise, it's like, well, how are we going to address this problem if this problem continues to rise?

I would encourage you to look at our path to net zero study because I think it hit on exactly where you're at. Not everything can be electrified. There's going to be difficult to electrify, and in fact, there's going to be carbon.

What was that called?

It's our path to net zero study. Caroline Winn commissioned it to be able to say, what does that look like? What is everything? So it does include hydrogen. It is electrification. That's carbon sequestration. And I think the most important thing is if you look at the energy basket of goods today, that if we chase full electrification to zero or carbon neutrality, the total cost for energy will be cheaper. But I do think there's an important part of it. If you'll look at that, you'll see that the total basket of goods for energy of a customer in that 2045 who's able to fully electrify is cheaper than somebody who can't.

And I think that speaks to what we've all kind of mentioned here today, is about equitable transition. There's going to be cases to where, if we're not mindful of that, we're going to leave people stranded. They can't electrify easy, and our most vulnerable population is going to be exposed to even higher energy costs. But our own view is that we can get to net zero.

And actually that total basket, once you put in gas, natural gas, electric, and all the fuels you put in cars, whether it's gasoline or diesel, it can be cheaper by 2045. So if you haven't looked at it, I would encourage you to look at it. And I'm sure our team would love to be able to sit down and walk you through it.

Yeah, I think it's just remarkable the things that are coming out with hydrogen, because hydrogen is like moonshine. You can make it out of just about anything. So we get into these waste material products and all of this other stuff. It's like, well, what do you do with this?

Mr. Mathis, just to get back to electric vehicles, if we may. Okay, you said all your pieces. Thank you. I think that one of the points, though, that it's brought up here is that we have to be innovative. There are buses running in the AV that are being run for twelve and 14 hours a day, and in Washington state because they have electrified pads where they stop for pickups. So there are ways to make these larger vehicles more sustainable when it comes to electric.

If we use some of the innovative technology that's coming out, and I think that that's an important thing for us to think about as well, that it doesn't have to be an either or. And when you think about 25% of our cars now being bought that are electrified, that is absolutely a market that demands charging. Right. We have to invest in this infrastructure, and we have to have it available for folks in all the places.

You don't just charge at home, you charge at work, you charge when you go shopping. I immediately changed my habits when I got a car and I didn't have charging at home that if I went out to dinner with a friend, it was wherever there was a charger. And I think people will quickly change habits when you getting from A to B depends on. I just want to bring it back to equity and just wrap up with this question and want to get to public comment if there are folks here who would like to make some comments as well. But Mr. Partida-Lopez, I just wanted to see if you had any equity focused charger installation programs which you think stand out as a success that we could really learn from going forward.

That's a great question because as we've seen up to now and we have CALeVIP here, we have Energy Commission, and we have PUC, right, with programs on charging infrastructure that have a component of their program targeted at low income or disadvantaged communities. I think we have yet to see a hyper focused program that is intended to fully serve a low income population.

The Empower program that PG&E is set to implement or is implementing now is 100% targeted at low income households that can access this incentive for charging infrastructure. That went through a whole obviously process to be able to have it approved. And that I think, is one that we want to uplift. I think it's still in the process of being fully developed and implemented. I think there's been some issues in kind of getting that to the finish line.

But that I think is a good display of an opportunity to go all in. The multi unit dwelling or at home charging that Energy Commission will have soon, hopefully will be targeted, at least for us, hopefully 100% of that at multi unit dwellings right. In an area where we know it's a big gap, right. And being able to really focus in. So there are a couple and these other programs that we've talked about, like CALeVIP and others, I mean, they are getting at that, but I think we need to, again, be a lot more intentional and not just have 25, 35, 40%, but how about flipping it, knowing that we have a lot more barriers when it comes to low income households or other multi unit dwellings and prioritize those limited resources that we have, right.

Because we have limited resources and we think about ratepayer funds and where we're investing them. Again, we want to make sure that those lower income folks that are also buying into that or paying into that gets a benefit. And so how are we then making sure that those investments are being prioritized there?

Yeah, please.

And if I can add something for CALeVIP, like I had mentioned in my comments, it was 41.7% went to disadvantaged low income communities in Block Grant One and we have switched to almost exclusively DACs and low income communities for Block Grant Two. We just took the first window in January through March, so none of those have actually been put in the ground yet. They're still in the process of going through everything. So hopefully we'll get some more robust information on that in the coming months as those start to come online. And like I say, we're excited about September 13th, next chunk of money starts to go out or the next application window, and those will also be exclusive moving forward.

That's great. Wonderful. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. And just I have to do one more plug for electrified roads, because I think that it really can help when we're talking about equity in access to EVs. Because if you imagine being able to charge while you drive to work, while you drive to family's house, while you're driving all the way up the 5, and then all you need is charge while you're off of the 5, right.

That would help with folks who don't have chargers at home. It also helps with medium and heavy duty vehicles so that they don't have to have as heavy a load in their battery to be able to make it from A to B and are able to go much longer ranges. It helps with public transportation, being able to be online and be available. So I hope that I hear all of this amazing planning happening to help us get to our goals.

I hope that there is space and inclusion of technologies like this that I think are part of the future that we need to get to. That will be, I think, have incredible ripple effects in not only increasing access for everyone, but addressing equity, addressing some of these large and heavy duty vehicle challenges that we have to help us make our goals and help us make sure that we're breathing the clean air, which is why we're trying to do all of this in the first place. So I want to thank you all so much for being here today, for the work that you're doing to help us get there. And I want to open it up to public comment for those who would like to make comments today.

Good afternoon. My name is Kellie Smith, and I'm here as a private citizen, although my name has kind of been circling around this building for more than a few decades. I've worked in the Utilities and Energy Committee for quite an extensive period of time. I am on my second EV over nine years. I am doing fine, and I'm retired. I have plenty of time to drive all over the place when I'm on the road looking for a charger. I dutifully charge at home in the night.

The car gets plugged in, but the timer delays. But I'm here really primarily because of one specific problem that somebody's, I think, could address immediately, and that is the Electrify America system. Electrify America is under a state jurisdictional, court settlement, and federal EPA to set up a system. The system's there, the chargers are there. There are 250 Electrify America charging stations in California, and you're lucky if they work half the time.

And they are filing, I had all these notes, they're filing all these wonderful reports with CARB about compliance, but what they don't tell you is that they count a session as somebody who drives in and charges for three minutes and leaves. And this happens regularly. I've done about twelve to 13,000 miles of road trips between Arizona, California, and Nevada since I got my second car in January of 22. One of those was in January, coincidentally, in Ms. Schiavo's district.

I stopped at a Walmart spot coming back from the Rose Parade. I couldn't charge in LA for different reasons, and I kind of had it planned. Well, if I get here, then I only have to stop one more time. So I stop at these six chargers at Walmart. Five of them are brand new. They're 350 kilowatt chargers. One of them is older, 150. One of them is completely broken.

Two of them have cars trying to use them and are only pulling 28 kW when it can pull multiple times more than that. Two of them are empty, I tried each, I pulled less than 30 kW. If I tried to charge my car on that, I could actually be halfway home back to Sacramento in the time that it would have taken me to try to charge that car. And that's just unacceptable. I finally got to the third one, like Goldilocks, and the 150 kilowatt charger worked.

And I was able to get enough to get further up to Kettleman City or Harris Ranch or someplace to charge the rest of the way. I'm here not as much for myself, but I'm on social media sites. Electrify America Experiences is on Facebook Group. There are people posting reports every day across the country and in California about these failures, and it is undermining EV adoption. I am passionate about it, and I still have the need to fix things from my legislative time, and this is the only one I'm paying attention to. And the Hawaii fires and the utility there, that really blew it.

But anyway, I hope that someone can intervene. There's only two reasons that I can think of to account for what they're doing, because they have electricity. First of all, are they getting distribution upgrades to pull 274 kW of power in 15 minutes, which is what I can do with my car and get 200 miles. I suggest no, the compliance reports that they're filing at CARB, they boast about not doing distribution upgrades. As we heard from the representative from San Diego Gas and Electric, those cars are like adding a house. And I don't know how you can adequately charge without the distribution upgrade. Now, the banter on some of the group...

Thank you ma'am. We have a long line here.

I know, the banter on the groups is that they're intentionally throttling them and lowering it. Why not? There are manufacturer incentives when you buy a car. My car came with three years of free charging. So they don't have an incentive to sell electricity on those units because it's free. And so they're doing something. And I hope that somebody can intervene because people out there are really, really grumpy. Thank you.

I understand. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Mike Robeson. I'm here for the California Municipal Utilities Association. I want to put in a plug for Kellie Smith. When I retire and hopefully it won't be that far away. I will never come back here. There is nothing that you guys are doing that I'll ever be that passionate about. So really kudos to Kellie. So really quick for California Utilities Association. They're 25% of the population's electricity, and transportation sector is a big part of our greenhouse gas emissions portfolio.

CMUA supports EV adoption, and some of this has been hit on in this hearing today. But the EV need, it's going to create enormous load growth. And just so you have it in mind, we're going to create all this growth for electricity to charge electric vehicles at the same time that the utilities are trying to rewire the state's infrastructure to account for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through renewable energy and so on.

So just as this committee and as policymakers are grappling with those two things, you're going to have to wrestle with it. We're going to rewire the system to do renewables and we're going to somehow have to still meet all this enormous electricity load. The municipal utilities are here to work with you on that. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Chair. I'm Mark Fenstermaker, here for Peninsula Clean Energy, a community choice aggregator serving San Mateo County as well as Los Banos. I just want to focus my comments in on some of the incentives that we're offering and how we're trying to bring an approach that it's about right sizing. As we look at residential use, particularly multifamily housing, where two thirds of our incentives are going in, we really want to see charging, look at how commuters are moving around and what their driving habits are. And what we're finding is that you really can get away with having a level one charger or a power managed level two charger. And that's going to bring a lot of cost effectiveness, both on the cost side, but also on your time side.

You're not going to need the panel upgrades, you're not going to need to wait the year plus for your incumbent utility to come out and upgrade your panel. So we just think that part of the conversation needs to be looking at this part of the experience, which is a right sizing approach. Not always just thinking about the high level twos or the DC fast chargers we can get more charging in place at a more cost effective rate, which is going to get more people into EVs. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, committee Members. Rebecca Marcus on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists. To achieve the essential emissions reductions associated with California's vehicle electrification regulations, we're going to need to expand and Fund massive build out of charging infrastructure, particularly in the heavy duty sector. To help provide the stable funding, the Legislature must extend AB Eight and 118 fees that Fund zero emission infrastructure. If they are not approved this year, this could be lost forever.

It is also critical that infrastructure actually works when people want to use it. UCS supports strong reliability standards for EV charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure. The CEC, as you know, is working on standards now on the charging side, and we hope the Legislature will work to uphold these strong standards.

Finally, as we look to spend unprecedented public dollars on charging infrastructure, we should be looking towards a future where much of that infrastructure is bidirectional and can allow power to be exported back from cars to the grid or buildings when the grid is stressed as the power goes out. Thank you for the opportunity for these comments, and we look forward to working with you.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. I'm Will Barrett with the American Lung Association. And first off, really do appreciate the conversation today. It's a critically important topic from a public health perspective on top of all the other things you've heard about today. So transportation is the number one source of harmful air and climate pollution in California. It's a major source of the disparities that many of the panelists talked about.

And really, without this transition to light duty, medium duty, and heavy duty zero emission transportation, we're not going to meet our clean air standards, we're not going to meet our climate standards, and we're going to leave billions and tens of billions of dollars in public health benefits on the table if we can't get this right, get this infrastructure built out quickly and efficiently and that works for all communities.

Some of our research shows that the benefits we're talking about, if we get this transportation to zero emission across the board, we'll be looking at 15,000 lives saved in California by 2050 because the air will be that much cleaner. So it's a climate issue, it's an equity issue, it's a public health issue at its core. I'll echo the Union of Concerned Scientists comments about the need for reauthorization of those critical clean air funding programs through AB Eight.

AB 118, the current bill that Ms. Reyes has talked about, AB 241 is just a critical public health measure to make sure that we don't have a $2 billion hole in our clean air programs over the next decade. So with that, I just want to again say thank you for airing a lot of these conversations. We need to get it right. We need to get it right quickly. And by doing so, we keep the focus on cleaning up the air for all communities. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Elise Fandrich from Trattenprice Consulting. We're here representing TeraWatt, who specializes in development and deployment of heavy and medium duty truck charging infrastructure. So very appreciative of the committee today and want to address a couple barriers that TeraWatt has identified for this infrastructure build out.

First, with regards to local zoning and permitting, we want to just encourage the state to continue to find ways to partner and work with local governments to proactively streamline and accelerate the entitlement process and timeline for battery, electric, medium and heavy duty charging infrastructure, particularly separate from other liquid fueling stations. So thinking about a separate permitting process for that type of battery electric charging infrastructure as opposed to other fueling.

Secondly, want to echo a lot of the concerns that have been raised here around the interconnection process. We continue to see that as a large barrier for bringing a lot of these heavy duty charging infrastructure fleets online. And finally, TeraWatt supports a greater Distributed Energy Resources Integration Plan and encourages the state and state agencies to urge utilities to provide innovative rates and tariffs that encourage the co location of DERs alongside heavy duty EV charging infrastructure. Thanks very much.

Thank you so much. So, having heard all of the public testimony, just Mr. Connolly, do you want to close with anything else?

I think I'm good. Again, appreciate the hearing, the opportunity to hear from some great witnesses. Thank you for the public comment as well. Definitely some themes that have emerged.

Absolutely. I again want to thank our panel that was here for their testimony and participation and conclude our agenda. I want to again thank Sam for all of his work, both here today and with the Utility and Energy Committee. Also want to thank my Legislative Director, Grayson Doucette, who's staffing our Electric Vehicle and Infrastructure Subcommittee. So he's your guy if you need to talk to us. And this concludes our Joint Committee of U&E and the Select Committee on Electric Vehicles and Charging. Thank you, everybody, for being here today.