Innovation

Innovation is the driving force behind Kitu Systems' engagement in the EV charging market. Drivers, businesses, and utilities need to rely on standard-based, future-proof charging solutions. Working closely with our partners, research organizations, and regulatory entities, we have defined a roadmap of capabilities to deliver the best value out of EV charging for all stakeholders.

Smart Charging

Kitu Systems' Convoy EV solution offers a whole set of smart charging features, ranging from built-in metering to energy output control. These allows users or site hosts to defer loads (for example to charge at more affordable rates) or curtail output (to reduce consumption, avoid demand charges) and utilities to send DR events and study customer behavior.

Kitu Systems has been one of the approved Meter Data Management agent during the California Submeter Pilot, and is one of the approved vendors for the following ongoing programs:

Additionally, Kitu collaborated with partners on the OptimizEV program. OptimizEV is part of NYSEG’s Energy Smart Community initiative in Tompkins County, New York and lets residential customers charge more effectively. The OptimizEV program is aimed to shift charging to times when fewer people require electricity in order to help reduce demand on the electricity grid during peak times. To learn more about the program click here.

For additional information about OptimizEV click here.

Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G)

Vehicle-to-Grid or Vehicle-to-Home integration refers to the capability of the vehicle battery to discharge energy back to the home energy network and/or the grid. This is a promising technology as studies have shown that vehicles could eliminate the need for stationary storage in most cases. For this technology to become available to the mass market, changes are required in the EVSE and in some cases to regulation (connectivity of a generating device to the grid).

Kitu Systems has collaborated with partners to deploy a pilot at UC San Diego, demonstrating technical feasibility, grid implications, and RoI of V2G. Access the full report here.

Vehicle-Grid-Integration (VGI)

Vehicle-Grid-Integration is the final stage of the roadmap, where the EV acts as a Distributed Energy Resource (both load and generation) and coordinates intelligently with the energy distribution network. In addition to charging or discharging, the vehicle's inverter will act as a smart inverter, with the ability to participate in grid stabilization programs and/or adopt different load profiles and curves. The vehicle will be able to interact and coordinate with other DER resources (PV, storage) and home or building energy management systems to optimize the generation and consumption of electricity based on a broad variety of context- or user-defined parameters.

Kitu Systems has been an active contributor to California Public Utilities Commission VGI workgroup and continues to work with other industry participants on defining a California roadmap for vehicle-grid-integration.

Kitu Systems is currently planning deployment of a VGI pilot to study the benefits of a combined approach between V2G, solar and stationary storage.

Additional Resources

Resources

Standard Communications Protocol - While no industry-wide standardized communication protocol for managed EV charging and V2G applications exists, the need for one is clear. In their collaborative article, Kitu and esteemed partners describe the fundamental challenges in managing VGI interaction, provide a review and analysis of the current set of EV messaging protocols, and define guidelines for selection and use of messaging protocols. Access the full article.