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A tribal clean energy developer hopes an electric vehicle infrastructure grant can help two Upper Midwest reservations move forward after recent pipeline battles.
Bob Blake is executive director of the nonprofit Native Sun Community Power Development and a member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indians in northwest Minnesota. His organization will share a new $6.7 million federal award with another group serving the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, a few hundred miles southwest along the North and South Dakota border.
“[Fossil fuel companies] are going to build oil pipelines, and we’re going to build an EV charging network pipeline,” Blake said. “We’re going to build the future as they build the past.”
The money, from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technology Office, will be used to purchase vehicles for both tribes, as well as to install more than 120 charging stations linking tribal lands, tourist byways and regional hubs.
The project brings potential economic benefits, a chance to improve energy self-sufficiency, and a “different narrative” for communities that have been consumed by pipeline protests in recent years, Blake said. Standing Rock was the site of massive 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Red Lake was a focal point in this year’s fight against Enbridge’s recently completed Line 3 replacement project.
The EV infrastructure is part of a larger strategy to move to self-power the reservations with wind and solar. The Red Lake Band has several solar installations on government buildings installed by native contractors led by Blake and solar entrepreneur Ralph Jacobson. A Standing Rock entrepreneur built North Dakota’s first major solar array, and the tribe’s renewable energy authority is raising money for a 259-megawatt wind farm.
Clean energy jobs and training could help Standing Rock’s struggle with high poverty and unemployment rates, said Joe McNeil, general manager for the Standing Rock Renewable Energy Authority. Chargers at casinos would serve the growing number of visitors driving electric vehicles, he said. Standing Rock may buy electric buses to shuttle people around the reservation but will not use them to pick up casino patrons in Bismarck or Fargo because charging could cause timing issues, he said.
Native Sun and Standing Rock Renewable Energy Authority will install 59 fast chargers and 63 slower-charging Level 2 stations. Blake said he wants stations placed at popular spots on reservations and in smaller towns between destinations where charging hubs might spur other economic development.
“It’s going to be an economic force, especially in these impoverished areas,” Blake said.
The grant money will also be used to purchase 19 electric vehicles for use by tribal governments and pay for outreach that includes 52 events over the next three years. Blake said the vehicles would consist of school buses and public transit vehicles to transport tribal members to medical or other appointments within the reservation. The tribes and several partners will study how they operate in a climate that can be severely cold in winter.
ZEF Energy will build the charger network. Megan Hoye, vice president of business development, said the grant would expand Minnesota’s charging network built with money from the Volkswagen settlement. The tribes’ plan expands the state’s charging network farther north and allows cost-sharing to install faster chargers at some sites, she said.
Hoye said the inter-tribal network will invest significantly in fast chargers instead of slower and more common Level 2s in the Upper Midwest. The faster chargers, she said, will better meet consumer expectations. As Minnesota’s charging network enters a second phase, money from the tribal network could enhance existing charging hubs and make them “faster chargers or even ultra-fast chargers,” Hoye said. “There’s an opportunity for a kind of synergy.”
The inter-tribal network brings other benefits. Hoye said the network will help, especially in North or South Dakota, neither of which have well-established charging networks. The plan calls for some Level 2 chargers at government buildings in preparation for potential fleet electrification.
Lester Shen, senior research engineer at the Center for Energy and Environment, worked on the grant and will assist with data collection. The routes chosen for charging hubs connect lesser served areas that should spur greater EV adoption and match well the Biden administration’s efforts to spread transportation electrification to even remote outposts, he said.
Among the barriers to more EVs has been a lack of chargers and the distance between them, Shen said. However, the investment in chargers allows drivers more options in remote areas. “The reality is transportation drives the economy,” Shen said. He added that the investment should also spur more community college training to prepare students for jobs in the industry.
Both Blake and McNeil agree that EVs offer training and employment opportunities. They have been working with local tribal community colleges on wind and solar jobs training and have plans to ask them to add EV courses. In addition, McNeil wants a local community college involved in data collection on vehicle performance that the tribe can share with car dealerships in the region selling EVs.
Jon Hunter, senior director of clean air at the American Lung Association, also worked on the grant proposal. He said challenges remain, including a need to ensure tribal chargers will not overlap but augment the charging plans developed by Minnesota Power and Otter Tail Power. These utilities serve areas where the tribes may want to operate chargers.
The proposal also has environmental benefits. “This is a great opportunity to demonstrate the benefits that electric vehicles offer to drivers and fleets while also reducing harmful tailpipe emissions that can cause problems for people with respiratory diseases like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which are often more common in Indigenous Peoples,” Hunter said.
Since the Dakotas stand near the bottom in EV adoption rates and rural communities have yet to embrace EVs, outreach will be a priority for the project. Hunter said the American Lung Association would support the tribal outreach efforts as the project moves forward through ride-and-drives and other activities.
For Blake, the pipeline protests served a purpose in enlightening people to the environmental degradation and continued reliance on fossil fuels that result from pipeline construction. Now, he wants the EV project to fight climate change in a different way. “This is about jobs, workforce development and giving people opportunities they never had before,” he said. “Those tangible things, to me, are very, very important.”
A coast-to-coast electric vehicle road relay recently stopped in Cleveland and highlighted the need for equity in the transition to electric vehicles.
Drive Electric Northeast Ohio welcomed the Route Zero Road Trip for its June 11 stop at the new headquarters of the Cleveland Foundation.
The foundation chose the location to promote equitable growth in the Midtown and Hough neighborhoods, a historically redlined area where a majority of residents are Black and median household incomes are less than half of Ohio’s statewide median.
The Route Zero Road Trip is an electric vehicle tour from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., that began last month. Drive Electric Northeast Ohio worked with the Cleveland Foundation to host the stop at the foundation’s new headquarters, which features a solar-powered carport, to draw attention to the neighborhoods and the importance of making sure that people at all income levels can take advantage of the shift toward electrification.
“We believe everyone should be able to access EVs and to have a clean energy charging infrastructure providing benefits beyond just a clean, quiet, fun ride,” said Michael Benson, vice president of Drive Electric Northeast Ohio. He’s also a co-owner of Command Consulting, a Wadsworth firm that advises on electrification, microgrids and shared services.
Beyond being electric car enthusiasts, Drive Electric Northeast Ohio focuses more broadly on electrification, Benson said, particularly the “chicken-egg problem of EVs and EV charging.” Ideally, he said, batteries could store electricity from solar arrays, which then could charge electric vehicles.
Both solar energy and the development of electric car charging in the area appealed to Keith Benford, who attended the Route Zero Road Trip event and said he lives in the Midtown-Hough neighborhood.
“It’s the new technology. They’re going with all-electric cars. And we can kind of capitalize on that by having charging stations in our area, and having the solar arrays.” Benford said. “We’ve got a lot of building that’s going to happen around here in our neighborhood. And that would be a perfect opportunity when the buildings come up to have solar.”
People in the Hough neighborhood have already shown interest in developing clean energy. The Hough Block Club has been working for several years to develop a community-based solar array in the area.
“Everyone in that group is committed to the project, but the timeline is getting stretched out a little bit longer,” said Jonathan Welle, executive director of Cleveland Owns, which has provided technical assistance to the Hough Block Club. While there’s no definite date for completion, the Hough Block Club had an environmental assessment completed earlier this year, Welle added.
Neither Cleveland Owns nor the Hough Block Club organized the electric car event on June 11. Yet Welle agreed that Hough and other disadvantaged neighborhoods should be at the table as electrification, the move to electric vehicles, and other parts of the clean energy transition continue.
The neighborhood “has been a center of disinvestment and capital strike for decades, due to racism and systemic injustice,” Welle said. So, he added, residents there can help create a new system to avoid those problems.
The City of Cleveland’s Office of Sustainability & Climate Justice also is working to get more electric vehicle charging capacity in the city’s neighborhoods. A charging station opened last fall at the Frederick Douglass Recreation Center in the Lee-Harvard neighborhood. The Cleveland Foundation’s chargers are currently available only to staff and visitors.
Several others are in the works, said Elizabeth Lehman, who is the built environment project manager at the city’s Office of Sustainability & Climate Justice. Two stations with a total of four ports will be at the Canal Basin parking lot near the Cuyahoga River. A station with two ports will go in at Cleveland Hopkins Airport’s red lot. And charging stations for the West Side Market and the downtown Willard Garage are part of a recently approved project by the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency, whose list of planned charging sites also includes dozens more locations throughout its five-county planning area, including several Cleveland Public Library branches.
Additionally, the city of Cleveland requested bids earlier this year for installing electric chargers throughout the city. “We hope to have a vendor selected soon,” Lehman said. “This project will also help us to determine the total number of stations that we hope to have available citywide over the next couple of years.”
The city’s bidding documents note that preference will be given to contractors who plan to work in communities that are marginalized, underserved and overburdened by pollution, based on the federal government’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. The tool shows most areas in the city are disadvantaged and would qualify under the criteria.
Preference will also go to contractors who can propose a no-cost or low-cost rate structure for low-to-moderate income consumers, specifically for those who use charging stations within the city’s business districts, the bidding materials said.
A March addendum to the bidding materials also noted the city’s intent to support the winning bidder in pursuing federal funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation’s website currently shows July 28 as the deadline for some of those grants.
A small but growing number of Minnesota electricians are finding steady work installing residential electric vehicle chargers.
Minnesota has around 35,000 electric vehicles on the road today, but that number is expected to rapidly grow in the coming years as more models become available. The state is using federal funds to help build out a public charging network along major highways, but even so, research suggests most drivers are likely to mostly charge at home.
Some will simply have to plug into an existing outlet in their garage, but many will need electrical upgrades, especially those with older homes or those who want to take advantage of faster charging times. Participating in certain utility programs may also require the installation of new equipment.
That’s creating an opportunity for electricians like Adam Wortman of St. Paul, who installed an electric vehicle charger at the home of a clean energy advocate four years ago and has since retooled his business to focus almost solely on similar projects.
“It’s where I see the demand,” Wortman said, “and from a business standpoint, it’s nice to have a specialty,”
It’s unclear exactly how many electricians have decided on a similar path, but anecdotally it’s more than a few. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 292 has trained and certified more than 400 electricians over the past two years to install commercial electric vehicle chargers along state and federal highways, but residential installations are more commonly non-union contractors.
“What I’ve seen is that with more electric cars and with more of the demand for electric car chargers, a lot of these smaller shops seem to be picking up work,” said Andy Snope, business representative and legislative and political director for IBEW Local 292. “They are getting a niche and a reputation.”
The market for electricians installing vehicle chargers is bifurcated into commercial and residential projects. He and others estimated that dozens of electrical firms install chargers, but just a handful focus primarily on chargers. Firms attract jobs through word-of-mouth advertising and references from vehicle manufacturers or utilities such as Xcel Energy.
“It seems like kind of an underworld niche for electrical contractors who are usually smaller but are getting a lot of this work, which is great for a small business,” he said.
Paul Hanson, energy service sales representative for Connexus Energy, said the cooperative recommends that customers getting vehicle chargers reach out to Wortman and a handful of other contractors who specialize in installations and have had good reviews over the years. Hanson said he’s started hearing from solar and heating and cooling companies that want to get on the utility’s list of preferred charging installers.
“Everyone is trying to get their hand into the electric vehicle market,” Hanson said, adding that Connexus saw a 90% increase from 2021 to 2022 in members enrolled in its off-peak vehicle charging program.
Electricians working on vehicle chargers generally gain their first experience working with Tesla, which had the first electric vehicles on the market. Many electricians bought Teslas early and discovered other buyers were struggling with firms that knew anything about chargers.
Bryan Hayes, founder and owner of Bakken Electric LLC, bought a Tesla in 2012 and moved from providing general residential electrical services to installing vehicle chargers. Though Hayes had been an electrician for two decades, he wanted a change.
“My reason for doing it was more ideological,” he said. “I wanted to do something that leaves a legacy of making the world a little better place than I found it.”
Hayes built a staff of six electricians who have installed over 4,000 chargers in the Twin Cities region, ranging from garages to apartment buildings to downtown Minneapolis ramps. His projects come from recommendations from electric vehicle manufacturers and word-of-mouth advertising.
One area of growth has been installing chargers in multifamily buildings. Hayes created a separate company, U.S. Charging, to partner with Tesla to install its commercial chargers in multifamily buildings. “Condominiums and apartments [and] hotels are now a big focus of my business,” he said.
St. Paul-based Sherman Electric owner Jim Sherman has installed thousands of vehicle chargers and collaborated with Xcel Energy on its Accelerate at Home charging program several years ago. Installations represent 40% of his business, with working at restaurants a second specialty.
“I think the market is getting more specialized and more niche than ever,” Sherman said. “I know contractors that only work on hospitals, and I know contractors that only do apartment buildings.”
Part of the specialization comes from building codes that have become stricter and more demanding. Sherman and his staff of four assistants developed expertise and an understanding of building codes by concentrating on vehicle charging and a handful of other industry sectors, primarily restaurants.
The charging sector is new enough that inspectors often call Sherman with questions and situations they encounter. Homeowners who suffered poor installations pay him to correct the mistakes.
The biggest challenge lately has not been codes or charger technology but instead educating newer EV customers. The early electric vehicle buyers had few questions because they had done their homework and understood the technology.
“My average phone call now is about 20 minutes to sell a customer because I have to educate them about how [the charger] works, how the cars work, how the cars charge, how the power works — everything,” Sherman said. “The early adopters, the Tesla people, knew their stuff. Now it’s getting to be a wider, broader range of people driving electric vehicles.”
In the Twin Cities, home and multifamily building owners typically pay $2,000 to $3,000 to install a Level 2 charger, which provides from 20 to 50 miles per charging hour. Level 1 charging, in contrast, requires a common outlet and no electric system upgrade but charges vehicles at just two to five miles per hour.
Wortman said Level 2 chargers can require homeowners with attached garages to add another circuit to their electric panels. He installs a separate meter for detached garages and usually upgrades the building to a 240-volt system. Then, typically, he has the homeowner pay Xcel or their utility to drop a line from its transmission grid to power detached garages.
While there’s no average day for Wortman, he usually has two to three installations lined up. Many times, he and other electricians will pick up small jobs like changing out or adding plugs or other repairs in addition to installing chargers.
Clients say electricians are hard to schedule for smaller jobs and are happy to pay them to do extra work, he said. He and other electricians also consult with clients on federal tax and utility rebates they can use to reduce their costs.
Multifamily apartments and condos present different obstacles. Electricians sometimes must connect chargers to the electric systems of clients living several floors above the garage. Or they work on managed charging that moves electricity around to different cars, a common solution to serve the growing number of EV drivers living in apartments and condominiums.
Hayes has directed much of his business to working with multifamily clients and Wortman and other electricians see it as the next frontier.
Despite continuing a lawsuit over the state’s clean car standards, the Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association recently hired an electric vehicle program director.
The organization believes it is the first dealer association in the country to add a staff member assigned explicitly to electric vehicle issues. Its vice president of public affairs, Amber Backhaus, said the position developed over the past two years as demands by dealers for expertise and information on electric vehicles grew.
Backhaus said the dealer association does not agree with “supply side mandates,” but does not see that as contradictory to preparing for the market shift that is already well underway.
“Electric vehicles are the wave of the future and our dealers are excited to sell them, but there are a lot of things they need to do to prepare to be able to sell them,” she said. “We get a lot of questions from dealers and we thought it would make sense to bring somebody in-house who could put together those resources and answer their frequently asked questions.”
The association selected Steve Nesbit, a former executive who oversaw electric vehicles and renewable energy programs at an electric cooperative and worked at an auto dealership. Nesbit said he sees his role as helping dealers “support the sale of electric vehicles and keep their business model operating.”
Nesbit worked for Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association for 12 years, focusing on renewable energy and community solar for part of his time there. Before taking the association job, he worked for an energy technology company and an auto dealer.
The association has been a long-term member of Drive Electric Minnesota, an initiative of the Great Plains Institute. M. Moaz Uddin, a policy specialist at the institute, said the addition of Nesbit will help “bridge the gaps between dealerships and utilities” and make for a smoother transition to vehicle electrification.
While electric vehicles will play a crucial role in decarbonizing transportation, they will not be the only solution. Minnesota needs to continue efforts to create low-carbon fuels and communities where residents can walk or use transit, bicycles and other transportation modes instead of cars, Uddin said.
Nesbit starts his role as the association continues fighting the state’s clean cars standards in a case heard in November at the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Last year, Minnesota adopted the clean cars standards developed by the California Air Resources Board, a move requiring dealers to make more electric vehicles available starting in 2024. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency oversees the new rule.
Auto dealers and Republicans have criticized the Walz administration’s embrace of the California model. The federal government only permits California to have its own auto emission regulations. However, it allows other states to follow the Golden State’s rules or those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
More than a dozen states have embraced the tougher rules, but California’s decision to ban the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles in 2035 has left several states, including Minnesota, debating whether to return to the federal standard. Backhaus expects the appeals court to release a decision early next year, which comes after the association lost an earlier challenge in federal court last year.
Fresh Energy, which publishes the Energy News Network, is one of six organizations that have signed on to a brief of amici curiae in support of the tougher standards. Fresh Energy policy staff do not have access to the Energy News Network’s editorial process.
Both Backhaus and Nesbit say the lawsuit does not diminish the association’s embrace of electric vehicles nor its desire to help members overcome challenges. Dealers may not like the speed of the transition, Nesbit said, but they understand the need to educate sales and service staff on the new technology.
They must learn how to speak to consumers about the strengths and weaknesses of electric vehicles in weather conditions in Minnesota, such as brutally cold winters that can diminish battery charges quickly, he said.
Backhaus said automobile manufacturers have begun requiring dealers to have chargers onsite and new equipment in repair shops. Dealers will need new lifts — because electric vehicles weigh more than internal combustion vehicles — and a retraining program for their mechanics. Ford recently announced new requirements could cost individual dealerships $1.2 million in upgrades, she said.
Minnesota dealers work with 65 different investor-owned, cooperative and municipal-owned utilities, Backhaus said. Some utilities, especially those owned by municipalities, have little experience with electric vehicles or chargers. Auto sellers will need onsite chargers, as will their clients.
“Hopefully, we can also educate utilities serving our dealers, so this is a smooth transition,” Backhaus said.
Tom Leonard, incoming chair of the association and president of Fury Motors in the Twin Cities, has become a big fan of electric vehicles and of the association adding a staff expert devoted to training, education and advocacy. The lawsuit, he conceded, may have led Minnesotans to believe dealers don’t want to sell electric vehicles.
“That’s a massive misperception that has been maybe played more in the media than in the car dealership world,” he said. “Car dealers are very pro-electric vehicles, zero-emission vehicles. We don’t want to be behind what’s coming at us.”
Leonard said he will have to upgrade his dealership, which sells Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles. The association has been working with manufacturers about how infrastructure charging investments work in Minnesota, for example by pointing out that state funding requires the public to have access to the equipment. Many dealerships must start installing chargers and new equipment early next year to meet 2023 car company deadlines, he said.
Backhaus said auto manufacturers have not yet created programs to help dealers pay for upgrades. The association plans to look for funding for members through federal and state sources. The Inflation Reduction Act offers a 30% tax credit from charger installations, but some of the other initiatives come with “a lot of red tape,” she said.
The association plans to continue advocating for legislation in Minnesota to offer incentives for electric vehicle purchases and develop a program to help dealers pay for upgrades. Rep. Zack Stephenson, a Minneapolis Democrat, has sponsored legislation that offers rebates for buyers and assists in helping dealers pay for programs certifying employees to sell electric vehicles.
In the next few years, Backhaus would like to see dealers have the educational background, infrastructure and services in place to sell EVs.
“We want them to be able to talk to their consumers about how [electric vehicles] work and that they’re not a scary, unknown thing,” she said.
Many individuals and households have at least one outdated appliance — a refrigerator, a water heater or a window-mounted air conditioner that they hold onto because of the expense involved with replacing them. Yet the money they save is often more than canceled out by higher utility bills.
Upgrading outdated appliances can help low-income households stay in their homes by reducing their utility bills — and by extension, lowering their overall housing costs. The money saved can be used toward other necessities such as food or transportation to work or school.
However, it can take years for a new appliance to pay for itself through energy savings. Without incentives, it often simply doesn’t make financial sense for a low-income household to upgrade outdated appliances solely to save on energy bills. This is especially true for renters or homeowners who are unsure about how long they will remain in a given location, or who are unsure about whether they can take new appliances with them when they move.
The challenge is in bridging the gap to bring the necessary up-front investment in energy-efficient appliances within reach. That’s where organizations like Elevate and Meadows Eastside Community Resource Organization, also known as MECRO, come in. They coordinate resources such as incentives offered by utilities, grants and low-interest loans, and make them available for low-income households to eliminate this dilemma.
Through its headquarters in Chicago’s West Loop, along with offices in downstate Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, Oregon and California, Elevate works to help homeowners and owners of multifamily units across the country obtain financing to improve the energy efficiency in their homes and buildings. MECRO is located on the busy 79th Street commercial corridor of Chicago’s Southeast Side and focuses its services on residents in the community. (The name Meadows in the MECRO acronym is in honor of Rufus and Everlena Meadows, the parents of Sharon “Sy” Lewis, founder and executive director of MECRO.)
Through a collaboration with the City of Chicago, ComEd and Elevate, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory utilized its trademarked ResStock tool and place-based data to develop residential energy efficiency strategies for the city’s residential building stock, primarily comprised of bungalows and other single-family homes built before 1942. Through the Chicago Advanced Building Construction project, a series of simulations was executed, which generated up to $49 billion in potential utility bill savings. An especially significant finding was that sizable savings could be achieved through installing heat pumps and other off-the-shelf technologies.
An old refrigerator uses up to three times as much electricity as a newer, energy-efficient model. Energy-certified clothes dryers use 20% less electricity than a standard dryer. Certified clothes washers require between 40% and 50% less energy and 55% less water to operate than conventional washers.
Utilities such as ComEd and Ameren in Illinois provide a number of incentives for ratepayers — such as rebates for trade-ins of old appliances — to facilitate the switch for customers to energy-efficient appliances.
Elevate has a number of funders that provide grants to heavily incentivize or provide upgrades at no cost for homeowners. In addition, in areas where utility incentives aren’t in place, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund can provide financing, according to Jackie Montesdeoca, director of building electrification for Elevate.
“There are models where we can have a lender include energy efficiency as part of the overall rehab. We do that in the Chicago area, but that’s a model that can be replicated [in other locations]. … The underwriters or the loan officers know that high-efficiency equipment or adding a little more insulation than code requires is going to make that building more resilient [with] lower operating costs, as opposed to a building that didn’t go through those measures in their rehab,” Montesdeoca said.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data cited in a 2020 report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, utility costs for poor households averaged 8.1% of their income, versus just 2.3% of income spent by more affluent households on utility bills.
While the lion’s share of these expenditures was for heating and cooling, household appliances accounted for a significant percentage of utility costs as well.
A comprehensive energy efficiency upgrade that includes replacing outdated appliances can translate to savings of 30% or more, according to Montesdeoca.
Yet many eligible households remain unaware of these programs, or have the mistaken belief that they do not qualify, according to Lewis.
“One of the things that I really try to push is that all of these programs are available, [but there is a] lack of information. You would think somebody who lives in Beverly” — a middle-class, racially diverse community on Chicago’s far Southwest Side — “wouldn’t be income-eligible and they wouldn’t be suffering from housing insecurity. They are. It does not matter. There are very affluent neighborhoods where people are suffering. You know, it’s a lot when you’re making a hundred thousand dollars, [but] there are eight people in your house,” Lewis said.
Reducing utility bills by replacing outdated household appliances is a vital tool in enhancing housing affordability through the knock-on effect in freeing up funds that were formerly needed for those bills — funds that can be used for other necessities that enhance overall housing affordability. Even small improvements, such as installing aerators on faucets or converting incandescent lighting to LEDs, can contribute to cumulative money savings, Lewis said.
“So, with these little aerators people think, oh, that’s just something cute. No, it’s not. It is saving you water. It’s saving you gallons and gallons and gallons of water. Is it impactful? Yes, absolutely. Will it be able to keep more people in their homes? Absolutely. Because this is now an expense that they do not have to pay on their property, that they can invest on their bills, that they can invest in their property,” Lewis said.
Nonetheless, many would-be beneficiaries find it difficult to justify the expense to replace a functional refrigerator or water heater. A lack of awareness about available incentives also contributes to resistance. It’s often necessary to educate people about how the return on investment combined with available incentives and other resources actually helps them save money in the long run, Montesdeoca said.
“Owners need a clear expectation of estimated savings related to their upfront investment. We work to make the process easy for them and break down costs along with identifying the funding gap. For a lot of small multifamily owners … these owners don’t have a lot of cash flow to play around with. So if we aren’t bringing incentives, grant dollars, or some kind of financing as a resource it is hard to otherwise make that project work. The best scenario is that we can connect the owner to the problem and the financial tools that can help get to solutions,” Montesdeoca said.
Many energy efficiency incentives are geared toward single-family homes, but multi-family building owners and renters also struggle with high utility bills. Energy-efficient upgrades for multifamily units are essential in retaining affordable housing, according to Karen Lusson, staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center, with offices in Boston and Washington D.C.
“The multifamily building market has always been a larger challenge. With the single family, it’s about reaching the homeowner and convincing the homeowner that this makes sense. Ideally, weatherization [and related] services should be provided at zero cost to the homeowner. In terms of the multifamily building owner, there can be variances in terms of the copays. There can be sliding scale copays for the building owner. But if we’re trying to increase the availability of affordable housing, we want to make sure those incentives are large enough, and those copays aren’t so big that they lose interest, or turn down these opportunities to invest in energy efficiency,” Lusson said.
Both ComEd and Ameren provide incentives for energy-efficient appliances for multifamily units as well as for single-family homes — working in Chicago and surrounding communities in collaboration with organizations like Elevate and MECRO.
Marcia Ellis is the owner of a six-unit property in Chicago’s New City community area located on the city’s Southwest Side. The legacy building, which was constructed in 1924, has been in the family since 1984. Ellis received a free energy assessment through Elevate, a loan through Community Investment Corporation and $44,697 in incentives from ComEd and Peoples Gas Energy Efficiency Programs to cover the cost of lighting retrofits, roof and pipe insulation, bathroom and kitchen aerators, LED lighting, a new high-efficiency boiler and other improvements. The return on investment? An estimated $2,380 in estimated annual savings, not to mention happy tenants.
MECRO worked with a senior in the community to improve the energy efficiency of her 100-year-old three-flat. Along with weatherstripping, insulation and replacement doors, the dwelling was fitted out with all-new appliances in each unit, according to Lewis.
“She gets three new air conditioners. … And she’s got a freezer in the basement that you could put a body in. It’s not energy efficient. She got a brand-new freezer. She got a stove and a refrigerator for three units, and a deep freezer. And she had her grandson’s college refrigerator. It’s not energy efficient. So, she got one of those. She got a new furnace and a new water heater. So, every appliance in her house is energy efficient.
“I visit her from time to time. You can tell the difference. You can literally tell the difference,” Lewis said.
And while making the conversion from gas or other carbon-based heating fuels to electric increases overall electric bills, making the switch can make up the difference by eliminating a gas bill altogether, according to Emma Baumgart, senior associate for communications at Elevate.
“With electrification [there] is the added benefit of having no gas bill. And especially in Chicago, People’s Gas has high fixed costs on your bill, where even if you’re not using any gas, you still are paying that monthly charge. And so that’s an added benefit of going fully electric. You still have fixed costs on your electric bill, but it’s just one instead of two. So obviously your electric bill goes up when you are converting to all electric, but by completely removing that fixed cost is another way that electrification can help with affordability,” Baumgart said.
For Lewis, a lifetime resident of Chicago’s Southeast Side, her work with MECRO in enabling residents to remain in their homes represents one way of investing in the well-being and stability of the community she calls home.
“Those things that impact the quality of life, impact how low-income housing exists in our community and how people are able to stay in their places and live comfortably,” Lewis said.
This article was originally published on Jan. 31 by THE CITY. Sign up here to get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morning.
Public housing residents who traded their gas stoves for electric induction ones saw improved air quality compared with their neighbors, according to the new results of a pilot program across 20 apartments at a complex in The Bronx.
Run by the nonprofit WE ACT for Environmental Justice, in partnership with the New York City Housing Authority, the Association for Energy Efficiency, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Berkeley Air Monitoring, the experiment involved switching out gas stoves for induction units in 10 apartments at 1417 Watson Avenue, as THE CITY reported last February.
After a 10-month run, the air quality in those households was compared to 10 apartments still using gas stoves.
The households with electric ovens showed a 35% decrease in daily concentrations of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide and a nearly 43% difference in daily concentrations of carbon monoxide, according to the study results released Tuesday.
The findings come on the heels of a national frenzy over possible federal regulations of gas stoves.
Shavon Marino, 34, received an induction stove at the start of the experiment and although she had to learn how to control the heat without knobs, she quickly grew to appreciate the oven. Marino said she was particularly impressed with how fast it cooked her food and the ease of cleaning the flat stovetop.
And as the mom of a 7-year-old, she didn’t take the air quality improvements for granted, either.
“It cooks better and just for the safety of my daughter, that’s why I like the stove,” Marino said. “As she gets older, I think this stove would be a great teaching tool for my daughter.”
Traditional indoor gas stoves burn methane, a planet-warming greenhouse gas more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. But beyond the larger climate concerns, gas stoves can pose immediate health risks to people in a household.
Previous research has shown that the pollutants released when turning on a gas stove are associated with causing or worsening respiratory illnesses.
An alarming December 2022 study estimated that 18.8% of childhood asthma cases in New York might be prevented if households didn’t have gas stoves.
A Bloomberg News report following that study indicated that the head of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering banning gas stoves across the country — but the agency later said that they were only looking into slight regulation.
In the Bronx, in addition to continuous air monitoring, researchers measured pollutants while preparing a “standardized” meal of steamed broccoli, spaghetti with tomato sauce and chocolate chip cookies. They made the meal three times each in six households — two with gas stoves and two with induction.
The researchers found that, while cooking using a gas stove, nitrogen dioxide concentrations were nearly three times as much when using an induction stove. In fact, measurements of nitrogen dioxide concentrations in the kitchens with gas stoves reached levels above what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
During the cooking tests, “an induction cooking household’s pollution didn’t change at all,” said Michael Johnson, technical director at the Berkeley Air Monitoring Group. “It’s another data point we’re seeing that reinforces this narrative that cooking with gas increases levels of NO2 [nitrogen dioxide] and other pollutants in your home to levels that are often unhealthy.”
Beyond stoves, other sources of pollutants like nearby gas boilers and cars also affected the levels of pollutants in the apartments studied, researchers said.
Misbath Daouda, a PhD candidate at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health who worked on the study, noted the health benefits of overhauling an entire building’s worth of fossil fuel-powered appliances.
“The transition would need to not only focus on gas stoves as a single appliance, but look at other systems that need to be replaced or improved in those homes to improve air quality and also meet carbon emission reduction goals — and that would include heating systems,” Daouda said.
A full-building transition would greatly decrease the risk of fires and accidents from people using their gas stoves to heat their homes in the winter, she added. Newer electric stoves with batteries would still be usable if the power failed.
NYCHA is preparing to install heat pumps in all apartments in the 96-unit Bronx, as well as a new electrified hot water system.
“The collaboration with WE ACT has helped NYCHA steer its decarbonization commitments, recognizing the clear air quality benefits of electrified cooking,” said NYCHA spokesperson Nekoro Gomes. “We continue to strive for wider implementation of this technology and we are thrilled to see the residents of 1471 Watson enjoying their new induction stoves.”
Switching to electric appliances can raise some concerns about expensive utility bills. The researchers estimated that operating an induction stove would cost about $6 more per month on electricity bills. But households that only pay for cooking gas would see their gas bills zero out, allowing for a monthly cost saving of about $11, the study found.
“Everyone deserves to live in a healthy home, regardless of your income, and regardless of the kind of housing that you live in,” said Sonal Jessel, WE ACT’s director of policy. “It’s ultimately really important that we’re finding pathways to ensure that as we are transitioning, it’s affordable and attainable for all populations.”
Now that the pilot program is complete, residents in the 10 control apartments can have induction stoves installed.
“They were impatient to get them,” Daouda said with a laugh. And no one who received an induction stove as part of the program asked for their old gas stove back.
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When the Crawford coal plant in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood closed in 2012, residents hailed it as a victory for public health and environmental justice. But now a Target warehouse sits in place of the coal plant, with a constant stream of diesel trucks posing a new health threat and source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The neighborhood is just one example, local leaders and statewide advocates say, of why Illinois should adopt rules and programs moving toward electrification of medium- and heavy-duty trucks — starting with the Advanced Clean Trucks rule pioneered by California and now on the books in seven coastal states.
“Because of past decisions going back 170 years, we are without a doubt the freight and rail hub of North America — these freight facilities aren’t going anywhere,” said José Acosta, senior transportation policy analyst for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. LVEJO led the fight to close the city’s two coal plants and fought against the construction of the warehouse on the coal plant site.
“If that’s the case, how do we mitigate all the impacts of it?” Acosta added. “The most pressing impact is the air pollution impact, the threat of PM2.5” — fine particulate matter — “nitrogen oxide and other things that have an impact on community health. That’s why it’s so important to electrify fleets.”
LVEJO is among the coalition of environmental, community and labor groups called NET-Z demanding the state adopt the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, or ACT. The rule would mandate that electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles make up an increasing percentage of heavy- and medium-duty trucks sold in the state. With different benchmarks for different types of vehicles, the rule would mean almost all new trucks and delivery vans would be zero-emissions by 2040. Given fleet turnover, experts estimate this means almost all trucks on the roads would be zero-emissions by 2050.
The coalition is also calling for the adoption of the Heavy-Duty Omnibus Rule, which would mandate stricter nitrogen oxide emissions controls on new fossil fuel trucks. Meanwhile, a bill introduced in the state legislature would ask the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to offer $200,000 vouchers for the purchase of class 7 or 8 large trucks, provided a diesel truck is scrapped in return.
“It is not like all the trucks sold have to be electric” immediately under the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, noted Illinois clean energy advocate J.C. Kibbey of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s a very gradual ramp,” and the omnibus emissions reduction rule could be “the peanut butter to the ACT’s jelly,” reducing emissions from fossil fuel trucks as the transition to zero emissions plays out.
In May, the Respiratory Health Association published a study showing that Illinois ranks fifth of all states in the number of deaths per capita attributed to diesel pollution. And 12 Illinois counties, most of them in the Chicago area, are among the top 9% of counties nationwide for exposure to fine particulate matter from diesel.
“People are getting sick and dying from what they’re breathing from the tailpipes,” said Brian Urbaszewski, environmental health programs director for the Respiratory Health Association. “And global warming is happening — when you look at who gets hurt most or first by those increasing extreme weather events, it’s going to disproportionately hit those lower-income vulnerable communities.”
Cleaning up trucks is also an environmental justice issue for workers in warehouses and other sites with heavy truck traffic. Warehouse Workers for Justice, an organization that has long fought for better conditions for workers in Chicago-area warehouses, is a leader of the NET-Z coalition.
So far coastal states — California, Washington, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and North Carolina — have adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, and 10 other states have signed memoranda of understanding agreeing to similar provisions. Illinois could be the first Midwest state to adopt the measure.
A study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists found that medium- and heavy-duty vehicles make up only 7% of the vehicles on the road in Illinois, but account for more than a third of their greenhouse gas emissions and about two-thirds of nitrogen oxide and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions.
The NRDC-UCS study used modeling to estimate that the least aggressive of three possible scenarios — the adoption of California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule — would result in “up to 310 fewer premature deaths and 347 fewer hospital visits from breathing polluted air.” The study also found massive fuel savings to vehicle fleets and savings to electric customers, since the increased electricity sales for vehicle charging could help utilities lower residential rates. “Under the ACT scenario, by 2050 annual cost savings for Illinois fleets are estimated to be $1.2 billion, and annual bill savings for electric utility customers in the state could reach an estimated $62 million,” the study found.
Modeling also looked at the adoption of the emissions-reducing omnibus rule along with the ACT rule, and at a most-aggressive scenario that would see almost all new trucks being zero-emissions by 2040. Those scenarios yielded greater health and economic benefits than the ACT rule alone.
The study noted that there are currently more than 615,000 medium- and heavy-duty vehicles on the road in Illinois, ranging from heavy-duty pickups and vans to semi-trailers. The rules would cover only new vehicles, and only vehicles sold by manufacturers in Illinois, not those purchased out of state.
Kibbey explained that the ACT rule would be enforced through a system of credits: “The standard is implemented as a percentage of total truck sales per manufacturer in the state. They can buy, trade, and store credits. In addition to the manufacturers’ ability to price and market trucks in ways that increase sales, the crediting system allows for a lot of compliance flexibility. If a manufacturer doesn’t fulfill its credit deficit in a given year, they incur a financial penalty based on the class of vehicle, and the deficit rolls over to the next year. If they don’t address the deficit, they will continue to incur penalties.”
The NRDC-UCS study notes that a higher proportion of components for zero-emissions vehicles are manufactured out of the country and must be imported. The net macroeconomic benefits of a national transition to zero-emissions vehicles, therefore, depend on the extent to which the U.S. ramps up manufacturing of such components. This sector holds potential especially for states with a rich industrial history and infrastructure like Illinois, advocates say.
“This is such an opportunity for us, this is not a hair shirt,” Kibbey said. “This is an opportunity not only to add jobs in the clean transportation sector … but to be the best state in the country to drive and manufacture an electric vehicle. If we want to build them here, let’s create a market for them here.”
Last year the electric truck manufacturer Rivian opened a factory in Normal, Illinois, in a shuttered Mitsubishi factory. Rivian’s R1T electric truck produced in Normal was voted the state’s “coolest” product made in Illinois in a contest hosted by the governor’s office this year. As Capitol News Illinois wrote, the R1T is the “first electric truck in production that features four motors, eight driving modes and up to 400 miles of range on a single charge, combining off-road capabilities with the driving style of a sports car.”
The Canadian electric bus and truck manufacturer Lion Electric also has a factory in Joliet, the Chicago-area city that is also home to one of the nation’s largest warehousing hubs. This fall, the company produced its first electric school bus in the Joliet factory.
Buses would be covered by mandates in the Advanced Clean Truck rule. Meanwhile, funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and various other incentives exist for electric buses, including funds from the Volkswagen lawsuit settlement that Illinois has earmarked for electric school buses.
“We’re making [electric trucks] in Illinois,” Urbaszewski said. “The problem is we’re not providing the environment to make sure they stay here and drive on Illinois roads, providing the pollution reduction and health benefits.”
The electrification of transportation in Illinois is especially appropriate given that the state’s energy law passed last year mandates the electricity generation sector phase out fossil fuels by 2045, meaning electric vehicles would be charged with clean power.
“We’re not just going to be moving emissions around to a natural gas or coal plant that will make electricity to run an electric truck — we’re reducing in a real sense,” Urbaszewski said. “Pushing electric vehicles makes sense because it gives you added benefits to what we’re doing in the power sector.”
Illinois’ investor-owned utilities ComEd and Ameren are launching beneficial electrification plans mandated by the state’s 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, investing hundreds of millions in electric vehicle incentives and charging infrastructure. And the Inflation Reduction Act provides tax credits of up to $40,000 for commercial electric vehicle purchases and up to $100,000 for electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
The NRDC-UCS report noted that the Advanced Clean Trucks rule could mean that total electricity demand in the state increases by 1.3 million megawatt-hours in 2030 and 12.7 million MWh by 2050, an estimated total of 1.3% and 12.9% of Illinois’ electric load in those years. (The study notes that “current annual electricity sales to residential and commercial customers in Illinois total 74.2 million MWh and are projected to grow to 83.8 million MWh in 2050.”)
But that new demand would be met with clean energy and by charging vehicles at night when demand is otherwise low, advocates say.
“As long as you have the rate structures in place, the infrastructure in place, it shouldn’t put much strain on the grid,” Kibbey said. “Since the grid isn’t used that efficiently, we build it bigger than we need for most of the time. In Illinois at night, we have a bunch of nuclear energy, a bunch of wind energy” that’s not needed. “If you are charging [electric vehicles] off-peak, it not only avoids creating problems with the grid, but we end up using the grid more efficiently.”
Massachusetts climate advocates say a clean heat standard proposed by state officials could fail to create meaningful progress toward decarbonization if it overvalues alternative fuels and doesn’t prioritize equity.
“The devil is in the details,” said Amy Boyd, vice president of climate and clean energy policy at the nonprofit Acadia Center, one of several environmental groups closely following the developing state policy.
In January 2022, then-Gov. Charlie Baker convened a Clean Heat Commission to develop strategies for decarbonizing the state’s building sector, which accounts for about 40% of its total emissions. Among its final recommendations released in November was the adoption of a clean heat performance standard.
The policy would create a system similar to a renewable portfolio standard but for heat instead of electricity. Heating fuel suppliers would be required to contribute to clean heat projects, likely by buying credits generated from activities such as heat pump installations and weatherization improvements. Over time, the amount of clean heat credits required would increase.
Other strategies recommended by the commission include reforms to state energy efficiency programs, establishing a climate bank to finance heat pump installations and weatherization projects, and scaling up workforce training to ensure there are enough contractors to perform the work.
As Massachusetts pursues its target of going carbon-neutral by 2050, buildings will be a major challenge. As of 2020, more than 80% of the state’s homes were heated primarily by fossil fuels. Switching to electric space and water heating would allow them to be warmed by electricity that includes an ever-increasing proportion of wind, solar, hydro and other renewable power.
While environmental advocates have praised most of the plans laid out in the Clean Heat Commission report, they are approaching the clean heat standard with more of a cautious optimism. Most believe the standard is inevitable, but are paying close attention to the details.
“The Clean Heat Standard is unavoidable in some form,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. “We want to make sure that we put disadvantaged folks at the front of the line, and we want to make sure it is legit clean heat.”
In December, the state released its Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2050, which confirms the current administration’s vision for developing a clean heat standard, setting a target date of implementation by early 2024. Governor-elect Maura Healey is widely viewed as a clean energy champion, but it still remains to be seen how she will develop and build on her predecessor’s work.
Advocates agree that, as the program develops, it will be essential to pay attention to what, precisely, counts as clean heat. Electric heat pumps will be central to any strategy, but it is almost certain that alternative fuels will also be proposed as qualifying for clean heat credits.
Major gas utility National Grid, for example, has declared its intention to replace the fossil natural gas it currently delivers with renewable natural gas and green hydrogen by 2050. Renewable natural gas is derived from natural sources, such as composted animal manure or food waste, and the production process may recapture some greenhouse gases before they are released into the atmosphere.
However, its full lifecycle carbon emissions are highly variable and may or may not be lower than those of conventional natural gas. Further, renewable natural gas is chemically identical to fossil natural gas, so it still releases carbon dioxide when burned, leaks from pipes into the atmosphere, and carries health risks when used indoors.
Also, a recent study commissioned by California regulators found that hydrogen concentrations above 5% in the natural gas system can damage pipes and require appliances to be modified.
National Grid has confirmed its view that renewable natural gas and green hydrogen should be part of a clean heat standard, arguing that electricity alone will not be enough to decarbonize heating systems in a region that experiences as much cold weather as New England.
“As suggested in the recent Clean Heat Commission report, low-carbon fuels provide an opportunity to reduce emissions, which supports our shared decarbonization, climate action and environmental justice goals,” the utility said in a statement.
However, any clean heat credit that is given to these fuels should depend on a rigorous analysis of lifecycle emissions, said Caitlin Peale Sloan, vice president for Massachusetts at the Conservation Law Foundation. Giving too much weight to alternative fuels could slow down the needed transition to electrification, she said.
“The way they count emissions from alternative fuels — that’s going to be the ballgame in many respects,” she said. “The longer you push off the switch to electrification, the more expensive it’s going to be and the harder it’s going to be.”
Advocates also argue that running new fuels through old pipes is mostly a way for utilities to keep their distribution business afloat as the region transitions away from fossil fuels and will only slow the pace of needed carbon reductions.
“That’s going to continue to be a difficult dialogue, because of the gas companies facing the threat of stranded assets,” said Matt Rusteika, director of market transformation at the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
Another major concern is equity. Lower-income residents are more likely to live in some of the state’s oldest and draftiest buildings, while, at the same time, having less money and power to weatherize their homes and upgrade their heating systems.
“Centering equity and engagement — it doesn’t get into a whole lot of detail as to how to do that, but keeping that as a tentpole of all of our decisions going forward is crucial,” said Boyd, of the Acadia Center.
A clean heat standard can generate more revenue to tackle this problem, advocates said, but the state will need to shift some policies and priorities to use the money to the best advantage. Boyd pointed to existing rules in state efficiency programs that won’t provide services to homes that have mold or outdated knob-and-tube wiring systems. The system offers some money to help with these fixes, but the reality is that few property owners go through the full process of making the repairs and pursuing weatherization and electrification.
“So now not only is the tenant stuck with mold that the landlord won’t fix, they don’t get weatherization and still have to breathe in gas fumes,” Boyd said.
To create an equitable system, it would be important to channel money from a clean heat standard into programs to upgrade and repair these homes, she said.
A study by the Regulatory Assistance Project, prepared as part of the development of the 2022 Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Plan, suggests other ways a clean heat standard could promote environmental justice. The standard could include a carve-out requiring that an increasing percentage of clean heat credits come from projects serving low- and moderate-income homes, for example. Or the parties required to meet the clean heat standard could receive bonus credits for reaching a certain threshold of credits from projects supporting disadvantaged residents.
Though the proposed details are yet to be rolled out, it will be vital for any clean heat standard to be coupled with complementary programs and incentives to make a decisive move away from fossil fuels, advocates agreed.
“The clean heat standard alone is not a silver bullet,” Boyd said. “It still needs to be combined with a clear plan for pruning the gas system.”
Heat pumps, induction stoves and other electric devices are increasingly seen as key to a clean energy future. And most new homes have electric service robust enough to handle them.
But older homes were not designed for big electrical loads, and millions will require updates before those new appliances can be safely plugged in.
In states like Minnesota, where old homes with natural gas furnaces and water heaters are common, upgrading electric panels “is going to be huge,” said Eric Fowler, senior policy associate for buildings at Fresh Energy, a clean energy advocacy group that also publishes the Energy News Network. “As we move toward electrification, that bottleneck is going to be the electric panel.”
In Minneapolis alone, the Center for Energy and Environment estimates owners of one- to four-unit buildings could spend between $164 million and $213 million to improve electric service. Pecan Street, a national research organization, found at least 48 million homes nationally may need electric panel upgrades.
And while changing out the electrical panel itself is fairly straightforward, bringing an older home with 60 or 100 amp service to a modern standard of 200 amps may require more extensive utility upgrades that can rack up thousands of dollars in additional costs.
Fowler said electricians modernize the panel of circuit breakers and, if needed, conduct a “service upgrade” to improve the wiring to carry more current between the home and the electric grid. “That upgrade cost can vary wildly, especially if it requires digging underground, potentially under pavement that will need repair,” he said.
One potential solution is a “smart panel” that could help manage the load, eliminating the need for a bigger utility line. While all the electrical devices running simultaneously could overwhelm a 100 amp service, a smart panel would manage those loads to ensure that limit is never reached.
“A smart panel lets you do the first upgrade without the second — you can manage more circuits with the same amount of electricity with slight adjustments in the timing of your electricity use,” Fowler said.
The Minnesota Legislature is considering House and Senate bills offering income-eligible grants to owners of homes and apartments to upgrade their electric panels to a higher amperage or purchase smart panels. The federal Inflation Reduction Act also contains home electrification incentives that could be applied to smart panel investments.
Connexus Energy, the state’s largest member-owned electric cooperative, has been promoting the technology to members. Rob Davis, communications lead for Connexus, said a coalition of businesses and clean energy advocacy groups support the measure and asked legislators to include smart panels.
While smart panels can save money over major utility upgrades, they are still an expensive undertaking. Angie’s List reported the average cost to upgrade an electric panel is $1,230, but that sum increases considerably if the project requires a new panel, additional rewiring and equipment, switches, and so forth. Some upgrades could cost thousands of dollars, especially on older homes.
The SPAN smart panel costs $4,500, not including installation, taxes and shipping. Schneider Electric’s Square D Energy Center Smart Panel lists at $2,999 but for now is only available in California. It also has a smart panel, Pulse, which works in conjunction with other appliances as part of a home energy management system that, if fully installed, will cost around $10,000, according to Wired. Lumin’s smart panel starts at $3,150.
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s Mike Robertson manages Brush With Kindness, which repairs and paints existing homes. He believes the state assistance program would help low-income residents replace aging fuse boxes with devices capable of managing new electric demands.
“Historically, with this kind of technology, the early adopters tend to be rich White people, right?” he said. “If you’re having an equitable approach to decarbonization, then you have to think about disinvested communities, communities of color, where the difference in the utility bill and indoor air quality makes a difference in their lives.”
In Minnesota, Connexus has featured SPAN at a contractor event and its staff is familiar with the product. Principal technology engineer Tom Guttormson explained that power from utilities enters buildings through panels, which redistribute electricity through branch circuits to power lights, home sections and devices.
Panels have a main circuit breaker and smaller breakers. If you connect devices that, in the aggregate, draw too much power from one circuit, then it trips the main breaker, cutting power to the entire building. Building owners can usually switch the circuit back on themselves after turning off an appliance that might be causing the problem.
Common electric panels “are not intelligent devices,” he said. “New smart panels can provide the ability to monitor and control power flowing to various devices, and even let the users see the usage with a mobile device app.”
Smart panels will help consumers take advantage of time-of-use rates by allowing them to turn off home heating and cooling, electric vehicle charging, or appliances during peak demand times, he said. Those with solar could benefit, too, by selling energy during high-demand periods.
For utilities, intelligent panels provide an opportunity to improve load management and could reduce the need for widespread and costly capacity upgrades of transformers and other grid infrastructure, Guttormson said.
“We need to work together to optimize how all this works,” he said. “These conversations are ongoing, but it is all starting. This is all new territory.”
Hannah Bascom, a vice president at SPAN, learned from working at the thermostat company Nest that consumers need time to understand how new home products can improve their lives. As more companies develop smart panels, a product category will emerge and sales should grow, she said.
“The electrical panel is very well positioned to be the central artery in the brain of the home,” she said. “You can understand whole-home energy consumption by circuit by device type, and that is rich data not from the customer experience perspective but from connecting to load management programs in the future.”
A SPAN customer in Lanesboro, a small southeast tourist outpost in Minnesota, said that after just a few months of using one, he’s discovered the data has helped him save money. Joe Deden, the founder of Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center, built a new all-electric home with his wife, Mary, that features Tesla solar shingles on a sharply pitched roof, a Tesla Powerwall battery, and all-electric appliances.
Deden wanted a smart panel to direct energy to heating, battery storage, or other devices and to manage loads. Offering an example, he said during a below-zero day the electric backup boiler started operating, consuming three times the energy of his air-source heat pump.
After turning off the boiler, the heat pump maintained a good temperature in the home, using far less energy. He said with the panel he could show his electrician and heating technician “that something was amiss” in the heating system that would require some adjustments. Accessing household appliance data is one of the strengths of smart panels, Deden said.
Being able to easily turn off power to his office or other parts of the home to “save a load” when not needed is another advantage. “The ability to monitor and shed loads remotely is the key,” he said. “Being able to see remotely what’s happening and to be able to control things is, to me, a great peace of mind.”
Thermo King, headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, has for decades manufactured diesel-powered refrigeration and heating units for use in semi-trailers, trains, ships and buses. The company’s logo can be seen on ubiquitous “reefer” trailers being pulled along highways across the country.
As Thermo King has begun a massive transition to electrify its product lines, training employees has been a challenge — and a common one facing other companies moving toward electrification.
Last year, the company contacted the University of Minnesota’s Technological Leadership Institute to co-create and pilot a 12-credit engineering electrification graduate certificate. They believe the program offers the nation’s first graduate-level certificate specifically for electrification.
The collaboration led the state to fund the Minnesota Center for Electrification Opportunity, an initiative announced in July that will train workers in companies moving toward electrification and hybrid systems.
Jodie Greising, director of the Minnesota Job Skills Partnership at the Department of Employment and Economic Development, said that “to ensure Minnesota businesses remain competitive and to help workers retain jobs, it’s imperative that training is available to upskill and reskill workers in occupations such as technicians, electricians, and engineers to help integrate, troubleshoot, and design the systems that leverage these evolving technologies.”
Grant Ovsak, Electrification Center of Excellence leader for Thermo King Americas, helped develop the certificate.
“We’re moving towards a sustainable power source from diesel, which is the same transition as the automotive industry,” he said. “We have a large employee base that needs to be brought along for that journey.”
A division of Trane, Thermo King has more than 200 engineers at its Twin Cities campus who could benefit from the certificate. But Ovsak said he wants employees in many disciplines to take the courses.
“The certificate is not just for engineers,” he said. “We want human resource [managers] to take the courses because we’re hiring in that area, and they need to be able to talk the lingo. Even quality, aftermarket and project management employees can take the courses.”
As companies move toward electrification, all their employees must learn a new technical language that will take time and practice, Ovsak said. The courses will allow students to test batteries in a lab and see the problems, such as thermal runaway, that electrical systems potentially face, Ovsak said.
John Hurst, senior director of the landscape appliance company Toro’s Center for Technology, Research & Innovation, said around 20% to 25% of the company’s sales involve electric products, some of which have been on the market for years. Employees’ training on electrification has been primarily offered in-house or on the job.
In the past, Toro, also headquartered in Bloomington, has worked with higher education providers on training programs that proved hard to sustain, he said. Hurst said that having the university deliver the classes and offer credits should appeal to Toro employees and other companies. The ability to count the courses toward a graduate degree should also attract more ambitious employees.
“What excites me about this is it’s a pathway we can use to continually send people through year after year as we hire or retrain staff,” he said, adding that Toro plans to encourage rather than mandate the training.
Keith Dennis, president of the Beneficial Electrification League, said the confluence of federal, state and industry investments in electrification “merit more deliberate training opportunities. We are seeing some of this around the country, but it is mostly from an increased awareness of sustainability officers and from companies who sell the products themselves.”
The Minnesota Center for Electrification Opportunity is working on a long-term vision to quicken the pace of electrification, a strategy it believes will create employment growth in Minnesota and position its workforce for jobs in a variety of fields, from utilities to renewable energy companies.
The state has few options for retraining employees in companies moving to electrification. Like many states, Minnesota has created clean energy training programs at state schools for students seeking jobs in the solar, wind energy and biofuel industries.
Non-degree and certificate programs exist for electricians and people in construction through unions and clean energy training centers. Electrification courses designed for employees, however, are challenging to find.
The Center for Technological Leadership resides in the university’s College of Science and Engineering. Travis Thul, senior fellow and operations director at the Technological Leadership Institute, said the center’s role has been to work with industry to develop continuing education seminars, short courses, master’s degree programs and other training opportunities.
The electrification certificate will serve as the foundation of an eventual master’s degree, Thul said.
For now, he worries about attracting students to the program in a tight labor market where many employees are comfortable in their jobs and have little incentive to give up their nights to attend classes.
“We’re facing an unbelievable demand from the industry standpoint,” he said. “We need this talent for the United States’ economic competitiveness to be assured, while simultaneously we’re limited on human capital motivated and inspired to come and pursue these topics.”
The certificate courses will be taught by professors of practice who work at the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Toro and Polaris. A full-time tenure track professor at the university assisted in developing the coursework to reflect academic standards, Thul said.
One of those professors of practice is Toro electrical engineer Robb Anderson, who delivered the first introduction to electrification course to around 20 people, including managers, engineers and service departments who worked at Thermo King.
One challenge is keeping up with the fast-evolving field, Anderson said. Another is motivating people with full-time jobs to finish their classwork. By late August, the first cohort had a few procrastinators still filing the final papers, though Anderson felt confident they would make the deadline.
Anderson said the classes feature field trips to different companies at various stages of electrification. Classes visited a University of Minnesota wind turbine research facility, a Wabtec Corporation electric train operation in St. Paul, and Toro’s headquarters.
“Students hear about the challenges companies face, which makes the courses very real,” he said.
Hurst, a 23-year veteran of Toro, believes the certificate helps employees stay up to speed in an industry facing a monumental transformation. “I think for us, it’s an exciting journey,” he said. “I tell people walking in the door that it’s the best time to come right now because we have so much change.”
The Minnesota Center for Electrification Opportunity holds an “Electroposium” Oct. 9 at the university’s McNamara Alumni Center. The event offers training and information sessions on the future of electrification.
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