Net Zero, Smart Grids, And Innovation – PG&E Drives Sustainability
The common resident sees PG&E as a utilities provider; however, there is a lot more than meets the eye. With innovation and sustainability at its core, PG&E has formed a path towards carbon neutrality, demand management, and wildfire safety highlighted at the PG&E Innovation Summit.
Living in the SF Bay Area, we often forget how our lives are powered. The fridge in our house. The car that we charge. The servers that run Silicon Valley. These are all part of the electric grid powered by one company — PG&E. The best and the brightest come together with a mission to build a clean, climate-resilient energy system on a foundation of safety.
AI, R&D, Innovation
PG&E just released the 2024 R&D Strategy Report. The integration of AI is a core component to meeting growing energy demand, stabilizing customer bills, and reducing emissions.
The innovation narrative was further brought into limelight with the Innovation Summit held in San Jose. Nearly 800 leaders from across industries gathered to collaborate on solutions that bridge California’s clean energy future. Leading tech companies showcased emerging solutions helping PG&E improve safety and reliability.
One such innovative proposal was presented with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. The vision includes integrating data centers in the heart of San Jose Downtown, transforming it into a net-zero community. With developers Westbank, the plan outlines three new local data centers. Heat from the centers would provide hot water to 4,000-plus residential units.
Increased Demand, Increasing Supply
Whether it is the power-hungry data centers or our electric commuters, PG&E highlights the importance of meeting increasing demand in a safe and cost-effective manner.
The data center market’s substantial presence in Northern California and Silicon Valley is a result of the area’s history as an internet interchange point in the country. Being a historical location for cloud service providers, its proximity to fiber optic, with internet exchange points, and a majority green grid, data centers tend to cluster in this region. Proactively feeding this ever-increasing demand requires creative solutioning to rethink how each load request in the traditional utility model is met.
Barring extreme weather-driven conditions, today, PG&E’s grid is only 45% utilized on average. This means data centers’ baseload will utilize more of the grid’s capabilities and deliver more per customer dollar. For every 1,000 MW of load from data centers, an anticipated 1-2% savings could be expected in monthly electricity bills.
Stabilizing Rates
The one concern that many Bay Area residents face is the rising costs of living. Rising electricity and gas rates are amongst the few factors. A concern that PG&E is well aware of. PG&E is committed to stabilizing customer bills and limiting average annual gas and electricity increases to no more than 3% through 2026, without sacrificing safety.
As part of a multi-faceted approach to address energy prices, PG&E adopted more than 200 company-wide savings initiatives to reduce operating costs and limit expenses. This includes a proactive effort by all their coworkers to identify and eliminate processes, products, or services that don’t add value for customers. This helps lower material, labor, and other costs, and enables more efficient execution, and increased automation.
Last year, $510 million was saved through such initiatives. This year potentially up to $1 billion in savings.
Investing in Infrastructure and Safety
Expanded electric capacity connects new customers, supports growing demand, and supports the state’s transportation electrification, affordable housing, and economic development goals. Layers of protection have significantly reduced wildfire risk across PG&E’s service area. These layers include proactive safety shutoffs, strengthening the electric system with underground power lines, stronger poles, and covered overhead lines in high fire-risk areas. The use of drones, helicopters, weather stations, and AI-enabled cameras further enhances efforts.
More than 800 miles of power lines have gone underground since 2021, which nearly eliminates wildfire risk on those lines and reduces the expense of ongoing vegetation management.
Poles and towers inspection rates increase by over 600% thanks to the use of drones and advanced imaging technology.
Finally, emergency response for storms, wildfires, and other natural disasters has been improved and has moved into a predict and prevent posture when it comes to building grid resilience and reducing outages.
Driving EV Adoption
PG&E has played an active role in accelerating EV adoption through charging infrastructure programs, rebates, and EV rates. The goal is to make charging simpler and more affordable.
With various programs like the EV Fast Charge Program, PG&E connected over 2,271 EV charging stations in Santa Clara County between 2018-2024 and has another 3,480 projects underway.
In terms of removing barriers and making EV ownership more affordable, PG&E’s Pre-Owned EV Rebate Program provides income-qualified customers with up to $4,000 when buying or leasing a used EV. Since the program’s launch in early 2023, PG&E has distributed more than 6,900 rebate payments, and more than $60 million in funding is still available. The rebate will be available through 2026 or until funding runs out.
The EV Road Ahead
The PG&E EV Charge Manager program launched in October 2024 transforms EVs into flexible grid assets through a targeted managed charging program. EV Charge Manager is focused on addressing the EV charging needs of three of the most EV-dense counties in the United States: Alameda, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara Counties. In collaboration with WeaveGrid, the program aggregates and predicts EV charging needs and the resulting impacts to the local electric grid. The program orchestrates optimized charge schedules across target clusters of EVs to avoid service outages and costly repairs.
More than 600,000 EVs in operation are supported throughout the Northern and Central California— one in eight in the country. PG&E is preparing the grid to support 3 million EVs by 2030. With proper implementation, EVs can provide a triple value stack – resiliency and cost savings through managed charging, backup power programs, improved grid reliability, and reduced emissions.
Along the clean vehicle transition, the utilities provider is also partnering with VTA to interconnect the Bay Area through what’s described as the “largest single public infrastructure project ever constructed in Santa Clara County,” according to VTA.
Bottom Line
A smarter, more fully utilized grid will transform energy use in California for generations to come. In addition to making the grid safer and more reliable, it will help reduce CA’s carbon footprint and give us the power to use energy in the way we want.
This translates into meaningful actions. More battery energy storage—such as the Tesla Megapack system in Monterey County. New grid architectures and energy management solutions—such as the downtown San Jose data center proposal. Enabling vehicle-to-grid technology currently being worked on by the likes of BMW, Ford, GM, Nissan, Zum, and many others.
This means making customer energy usage data easily understandable and available – as seen in Apple Home. Residential PG&E electric customers with an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch can now connect their PG&E account to the Home app, enabling them to access, understand, and make informed decisions about electricity use.
All images Janam A. Gupta/Siliconeer.
