APPA
Patricia Taylor serves as the American Public Power Association’s Senior Manager of Regulatory Policy and Business Programs. She supports the association’s Moving Public Power Forward Strategic Initiative and focuses on distributed energy resources and utility business models.
As interest in decarbonization grows, so does momentum for transportation electrification. Now we're seeing a new player emerge in the transportation sector — electric utilities. The American Public Power Association (APPA) recently published a report, Exploring Electric Vehicle Rates for Public Power, and identified three dominant EV rate trends: incentivizing off-peak charging, offering non-traditional rate structures, and embracing commercial and industrial customer electrification (in addition to residential).
All types of electric utilities are developing EV programs in their communities, not only to support load and revenue growth, but to support the adoption of a new energy technology that boasts environmental and public health benefits. As our nation's vehicle fleet becomes more electrified, utilities are considering how to develop rates to encourage adoption, manage load, and recover costs, as well as how to educate customers about these rates.
Public power utilities are in forty-nine states and five U.S. territories, serve about fifteen percent of the population, and vary greatly in size, with the median customer count coming in at roughly two thousand meters. Public power is not-for profit with a focus on local decision making — typically by a city council or utility board, which allows them to be nimble when launching new rate offerings.