A Baltimore utility pays electric vehicle owners an average of 240 dollars a year to let it choose when they charge

What a participant earns

Baltimore Gas and Electric, a utility serving central Maryland, runs a programme called Smart Charge Management that pays a customer for letting the utility and its technology partner, WeaveGrid, decide when an electric vehicle charges. WeaveGrid, which operates the programme software, states that a customer earns up to 10 dollars a month in bill credits for each charging device enrolled. A separate rate, the Vehicle Charging Time of Use Rate, charges less for electricity used at times when demand on the grid is low, typically overnight, and WeaveGrid states that a typical participant saves an average of 120 dollars a year on the electric bill this way. A customer who joins both earns an average of 240 dollars a year for each electric vehicle, according to WeaveGrid.

Maryland made the programme permanent

The Public Service Commission of Maryland ran Smart Charge Management as a demonstration from 2021 to 2024, then approved expanding it into a permanent programme in August 2024. During the demonstration, 92% of charging load complied with the schedule that Baltimore Gas and Electric and WeaveGrid set for participants, according to WeaveGrid, a figure the trade publication Utility Dive also reported. The programme scored 1.58 on the cost effectiveness test Maryland requires, a test that compares the benefits a programme delivers against what it costs to run, so a score above 1 means the benefits are larger than the cost. The commission set a target of 30,000 enrolled devices by 2027.

Our Smart Charge Management program already demonstrates how effectively implemented EV managed charging can meet driver mobility needs while deferring costly infrastructure upgrades and improving overall grid resilience,

Divesh Gupta, director of clean energy solutions at Baltimore Gas and Electric. Source 5.

A separate grid benefit, not a customer payment

An Argonne National Laboratory study found that using active managed charging instead of the Time of Use rate alone could save up to 300 dollars per vehicle per year in benefits to the electric grid, according to WeaveGrid and Utility Dive, both of which cite the study. That figure is a modeled saving on the cost of upgrading the local electric grid, not a payment a customer receives, and it stays separate from the 120 and 240 dollar figures a participant actually earns in bill credits and rate savings.

The idea predates the programme by a year

A 2019 order from the Public Service Commission of Maryland shows the idea is not new. Delmarva Power and Potomac Electric Power Company, known as Pepco, were already running a smaller version of it, under a different name, the FleetCarma programme. FleetCarma paid a customer 50 dollars once for signing up, plus 5 dollars for each month a monitoring device stayed plugged into the vehicle and active. It sat inside a wider 48.1 million dollar electric vehicle portfolio that funded 18,455 chargers across Baltimore Gas and Electric, Delmarva and Pepco, most of which paid for charger purchase rebates rather than managed charging itself.