Ford Pro and Southern Company have successfully completed a six-month pilot program focused on managed charging for electric commercial fleet operations.
The pilot sought to gain insights into the opportunities and challenges associated with fleet charging, as well as its impact on the grid.
Ford Pro Intelligence monitored and analyzed data from Southern Company’s more than 200 existing Ford F-150® Lightning® trucks and over 150 Level 2 AC Ford Pro Chargers. Ford Pro’s software allowed Southern Company to control when their chargers were available and see the impact on energy usage when charging abilities were managed during specific peak-charging periods.
The fleet maintained operational continuity throughout, proving that dynamic fleet charging has the ability to respond to utility signals while protecting business-critical uptime. As a result, Southern Company was able to reduce total charging demand by 0.5 megawatts (500 kW) of power during a 30-minute demand response event, averaging approximately 10 kW of savings per charger.
The pilot demonstrated energy savings potential, grid efficiency, and maintained charger reliability for fleet drivers.
“Ford Pro’s energy management algorithm was able to throttle chargers to avoid windows of peak grid demand, shifting charging within the drivers’ existing charging window while still ensuring that drivers got the energy they expected out of a charging session,” explained Tom Canada, fleet electrification project manager at Georgia Power, a Southern Company subsidiary, in a statement. “The insights gleaned from this pilot represent valuable learnings that can be applied to help us manage our electric vehicle fleets more efficiently and help us better advise customers who may approach our electric utilities for advice about managed charging for their fleets.”
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