Epik is working with clients and partners on extending the service footprint at the charging station Edge, AI-enabled "smart grid", Charging Network Operations Center (CNOC) deployment, and enabling vertical industry EV adoption.
EVs are an essential strategy to reduce climate and air pollution from transportation, with associated regulations and standards development that emphasize energy efficiency and lower emissions.
1 GlobalEV Outlook 2021 International Energy Agency, April 2021
As popularity and demand for EVs continue to accelerate, (fast) charging infrastructure needs to expand in parallel. Without this infrastructure, identified as the top barrier to EV adoption, achieving country/state mandates to strengthen critical policies such as CO2 emissions standards and zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales will fall short.
2 ElectricVehicle Charging Infrastructure Trends from the Alternative Fueling StationLocator 4Q20 (NREL), June 2021
Challenges to expanded deployment and operation of public, workplace, and commercial/fleet charging infrastructure include lack of experience and expertise and high upfront costs.
Epik can provide our in-house expertise to help transportation planners, infrastructure developers, and others understand the rapidly changing landscape for EV charging.
As important, we look beyond typical financial assistance models, such as incentives and government-sponsored financing currently employed (but falling short) to overcome upfront cost barriers, to develop value-add services that can be monetized at the charging station Edge.
1 GlobalEV Outlook 2021 International Energy Agency, April 2021
Tomorrow’s electrical “smart grid” can be considered analogous to today’s compute, storage, and network topography built using an AI-enabled distributed compute architecture – replacing on-premise, (hybrid) cloud, edge and IoT nodes with (hybrid) power plants, microgrids, battery storage units, buildings, charging stations, and EVs, all networked together. The same balance between latency, cost, performance, resiliency, and, not to forget, security and compliance are required. Add to this infinitely diverse power generation and consumption characteristics, not to mention a dynamic demand and load environment, one thing is clear. We will need AI to manage the complexity – an area of active development within Epik’s AI practice.
