By Michael Kuser

BOSTON — Massachusetts’ $2,500 rebates are increasing electric vehicle sales, and state officials are preparing for the shift in demand now, the state’s Department of Energy Resources said Thursday.

“We do have a goal for 300,000 electric vehicles to be registered in the state by 2025,” DOER Director of Emerging Technology Will Lauwers said in a briefing to the Environmental Business Council of New England on Nov. 30. “Providing the charging infrastructure for that is crucial.”

On November 30th, the Mass. DOER held a briefing for the Environmental Business Council of New England | © RTO Insider

EV registrations have grown from 782 in July 2013 to 3,770 as of March 31, 2017, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. In the same period, the number of gas-electric hybrids has increased more than five-fold, from 1,034 to 5,701. The state launched its rebate program, which covers both EVs and hybrids, in June 2014.

Although the alternative transportation sector includes biofuels and gas-electric hybrids efforts, electric vehicles and transportation electrification dominate the state’s efforts, Lauwers said. The DEP’s program to incentivize workplace charging stations exhausted its funding this year.

“Utilities have shown interest in helping to reduce the cost of entry to deploying EV charging, so they would help to cover more of the associated costs with new meters, new pads and new connections,” Lauwers said. “Then there’s the VW funding.”

As penance for having rigged diesel emissions test results, Volkswagen is spending $2 billion to install more than 300 vehicle chargers in 15 metro areas, including Boston.

Resiliency, not Totality

Lauwers said Massachusetts is “a nation-leader” in its commitment to reducing greenhouse gases and fostering new renewable energy resources and has “made a lot of progress in the past 12 months” on energy efficiency, energy storage and demand reduction.

He cited the DOER’s June announcement of $10 million in incentives for energy storage demonstration projects, a 200-MW storage deployment target and a $40 million initiative that awards grants to cities and towns to use clean energy technologies to mitigate the risks of power outages arising from severe weather. Award announcements on the storage incentives are expected by early 2018. (See Massachusetts Underwhelms with 200-MWh Storage Target.)

Judge (left) and Lauwers | © RTO Insider

Michael Judge, the DOER’s director of renewable and alternative energy, said storage is key for both grid stability and reducing emissions. Without storage “you end up keeping all these fossil fuel units going because they can’t ramp that fast,” Judge said.

In discussing resiliency studies that the department conducted on 12 state medical centers, Lauwer said resiliency doesn’t mean 100% of normal power availability, just enough to run core functions. For example, a nursing home might lose its heat in a power outage just because it needs 9 V to run the pilot light.

Infrequently used back-up generators at hospitals often fail in the first few hours of running, so energy storage can make a big difference in such situations, he said in discussing the agency’s analytical tools that help facility administrators understand what energy resiliency steps are economically viable for them. In addition, DOER will soon be clarifying how much energy storage utilities can own and how they will be compensated, Lauwers said.

Massachusetts is funding incentives to include energy storage in solar installations, as well as grants for peak demand reduction. Pairing energy storage with solar panels is meant to enhance grid resiliency by reducing the demand curves. Peak reduction grants cover a wide range of projects, from utilities improving the efficiency of substations, to municipalities working to reduce the energy consumption of big-box retail stores, to a thermal energy storage project on Nantucket that will delay the need for a new undersea transmission cable.

| Mass. DOER

The state this year launched its Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) program to provide incentives for “long-term sustainable … cost-effective solar development.” The program provides adders based on location, and to projects that provide unique benefits, including community solar and energy storage.

Judge said the state’s new Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard is the only one of its kind in the country. The final draft regulations, expected to be promulgated on Dec. 29, include combined heat and power, flywheel storage, renewable thermal, fuel cells and waste-to-energy thermal technologies. The regulations oblige all retail electric suppliers to acquire a certain percentage of their power from eligible technologies, starting at 4.25% in 2017 and increasing by 0.25% each year.

“Heating is behind the electric sector in decarbonizing and amounts to about 30% of GHG emissions,” Judge said. “DOER incentives for renewable thermal energy and heat pumps are paying off, with nearly 500 MW of combined heat and power systems installed as of the end of October 2017.”

Energy Efficiency Peaking?

Arah Schuur, DOER director of energy efficiency, said the state will deliver $8 billion in efficiency benefits from 2016-2018 and that those savings will continue to grow.

Schuur | © RTO Insider

“You put in a light bulb, you put in an efficient piece of technology and it lasts for five, seven, 11 or 20 years, and those benefits accrue as we add more to the portfolio,” Schuur said.

Lighting savings comprise 83% of residential energy efficiency gains and 23% of overall savings. Although the state has nation-leading goals for both electric and natural gas, efficiency savings seem to be peaking, she said.

“That’s because of the change in the lighting market and the change in federal lighting standards. So, screw-in light bulbs are nearing market saturation. There’s natural uptake of LED lights. This [is a] great good news story overall for energy efficiency,” Schuur said.

The limits to lighting’s contribution to efficiency savings will “require a whole new way of thinking about energy efficiency,” she said. The DOER is exploring new ways to achieve efficiency results, such as addressing demand through utility programs, looking at the residential contractor market and driving innovation.