Smart chargers can help fleets, governments, private businesses, and charging stations to offer cost-effective charging that never overloads the electrical grid. For instance, smart software controls can pull electricity from on-site solar panels or backup energy systems instead of the electrical grid to avoid surge pricing of electricity when multiple EVs are plugged in at once. They can even dynamically adjust the flow of electricity based on how long an EV driver can charge-directing less electricity to vehicles that can park for longer and more electricity to those that need to hit the road.

These innovative charging control strategies have helped NREL become a key contributor to the EVs@Scale Consortium, DOE's flagship effort to advance high-power charging for all EVs. One project, called Flexible charging to Unify the grid and transportation Sectors for EVs at scale (FUSE), has brought together experts from NREL, Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories to develop an entire portfolio of smart charge management strategies. FUSE has enabled researchers to identify the highest-priority areas that can help advance smart charge management nationwide, partner with federal agencies to optimize fleet electrification, and research smart charge management strategies for commercial vehicles including school buses, transit buses, drayage trucks, and local, regional, and long-haul freight.

Through EVs@Scale projects such as eCHIP, FUSE, and others, NREL is leading efforts to advance high-power charging, smart charge management, and global charging codes and standards -in other words, lowering the barriers to commercial charging, one by one.

The Challenge of Scale: Testing Grid Controls at 20 MW and Above

A final challenge to widespread commercial vehicle electrification may only become pressing many years down the line. But NREL researchers are addressing it today.

As commercial EV adoption accelerates and charging rates begin to climb toward 3.75 MW of power, demands on the nation's electric grids will increase, too. In the future, when EVs begin to make up the majority of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles on the road, single charging connectors will need to be able to provide thousands of kilowatts of power at a time, and charging sites will need to provide upwards of 20 MW.

Enter the jewel in NREL's EV charging crown: a globally unique facility, currently under construction at NREL's Flatirons Campus, called the Megawatt Charging Emulator (MCE).

Using real-world data, the MCE will enable researchers to emulate the charging profiles of several electric trucks, or even non-road vehicles like planes or trains, charging at a single site under different vehicle conditions.

Coupled with the Controllable Grid Interface (CGI), an electrical grid that can generate 20 MW of power-more than double the power of its predecessor-researchers can emulate conditions on both the vehicle and grid that are difficult to replicate in the field. Because it will be linked to several real-time emulators, the facilities will allow NREL's EV charging researchers to run enormous, complex grid emulations, informed by real-world vehicle operating data, of how a grid and the EV charging infrastructure connected to it will function while handling up to 20 MW of electricity.

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The CGI is part of NREL's Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES), the nation's most advanced platform for energy system integration research at scale. Once complete, the MCE will supplement the ARIES platform portfolio, which also contains several resources to integrate energy storage, renewable power, flexible building loads, and other distributed energy resources. One day, it may even support research on electric aviation and electric charging for other transit modes. This globally distinct set of research tools and capabilities makes ARIES capable of addressing the challenges outlined in the U.S. Department of Energy's vision for a supercharged electric grid.

"What we're building at Flatirons is absolutely unique," Meintz said. "It will be the only facility in the world that can emulate both the electrical grid and vehicles. That capability will help us design EV charging hardware and infrastructure that not only operates at the 10 to 20 MW level but can boost the grid's performance rather than placing it under strain.

"Rather than constantly needing to upgrade the grid to accommodate ever increasing loads," Meintz continued, "this research will improve our ability to accelerate the installation of charging hardware with new control strategies and technologies that can take the burden off the grid."

In turn, these new technologies will one day help fleets, governments, and businesses worldwide deploy grid-friendly, futureproofed technology that can charge commercial vehicles at scale.

The Result: A New Transportation Paradigm

For Meintz, high-power charging for EV fleets represents a paradigm shift-away from the diesel systems that have powered heavy vehicles for more than a century, and toward a system that can handle different streams of energy produced from renewable energy sources like the sun, the wind, and the waves.

"If you think about the way that we have historically fueled vehicles, the old way involved digging for oil, refining it, and transporting it to a site where you could refuel vehicles," Meintz said. "The new standard will be cleaner but more complex."

Yet with new vehicle-to-grid integration strategies, smart charge management, and heavy-duty EV technologies, the future of heavy vehicles is looking brighter by the day.

Learn more about NREL's sustainable transportation and mobility research, the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) research platform, and the laboratory's focus on advanced commercial vehicles. And sign up for NREL's quarterly transportation and mobility research newsletter, Sustainable Mobility Matters , to stay current on the latest news.

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