San Diego leads way in electric cars, solar

Some of San Diego Gas & Electric's employees walk the talk when it comes to going green by driving electric vehicles.

About 30 employees own Nissan's first electric car, the Leaf, said Mike Niggli, president and chief operating officer of SDG&E.

They are part of the near-2,000 electric vehicle fleet that's zipping around San Diego. That figure is expected to explode to 200,000 by 2020.

“They formed a group called the FLOC – First Leaf Owner’s Club," said Niggli. "Then someone bought a [Chevy] Volt so that ruined it. Now they are the EVOC – Electric Vehicle Owner’s Club.”

Niggli spoke on Thursday at the World's Best Technologies (WBT) Innovation Marketplace, an annual conference that unites entrepreneurs, emerging technologies and undiscovered startups.

After a long stretch in Texas, it's being held this year at the San Diego Convention Center from Oct. 24 to 26.

While San Diego has the highest concentration of electric car owners, Niggli admits he is not one of them.

In light of rising gas prices, however, he says he’s definitely considering following suit of his EV-owner employees. (His 1998 Jeep gets just 17 miles a gallon and his last trip to fill up the tank cost him $85.)

As more people in San Diego trade in the pump for a plug, one challenge is dealing with the “clustering” of EVs in neighborhoods.

“If you come home and start charging, you can overload if you have two to four of these homes charging at once,” he said.

SDG&E is rolling out 500 patented smart transformers to give real-time information about charging, sending signals to cars to slow down their charge levels.

"It's bifurcated to make sure everyone is charged up by the time they are ready to go at 6 a.m. the next morning," Niggli said.

The other important piece is trying to keep vehicles charging off peak hours.

“Our peak is afternoons, generally in the summer, so we don’t want cars charging then because we will need to build more power plants for that,” he said.

SDG&E says the best time to charge is between midnight to 5 a.m. to avoid building any more capability into its system.

“We found you can induce people through rate structures to move their stuff off peak,” he said.

SDG&E is pilot testing three different rate structures for time-of-use (TOU) rates.

“We are trying to figure out which ones are the most effective,” he said. “With owners who have participated, 84 percent of their energy is now charging at super off peak."

San Diego is only one of two cities in the world with an all-electric fleet of Car2Go vehicles.

About 300 of the tiny smart cars are in San Diego and can be rented by the minute, hour, day or week. Each car's location pops up on a mobile device, letting users easily track them down.

“They have at least 8,000 to 10,000 members already,” Niggli said.

San Diego isn’t just leading the way when it comes to EVs; it also ranks No. 1 in solar rooftop penetration. There are more than 19,000 solar rooftop systems in San Diego that are generating power into the grid.

“We recognize this is a nice growth path but it actually has limitations,” he said. “There is a plateau in the number of people who can take advantage of solar.”

That’s because people need to own their own home -- with a south-facing roof -- and investing in a system isn't cheap.

SDG&E is working to break through that plateau; it has a proposal in with its public utilities commission to expand access to solar by letting people "share the sun."

Under the proposal, SDG&E or developers would build smaller 2-to-10 megawatt systems known as regional or community solar systems.

Rather than on rooftops, systems will be located in larger areas – like Ramona -- that the public can buy in small slices.

“You can buy 3, 4, 6 or 8 kilowatts and we will deliver it to your home,” Niggli said.

That means apartment renters or homeowners have their own piece of the sun without installing their own solar rooftop.

“If you happen to move from Chula Vista to Escondido, or from apartment A to B, we will redeliver it,” he added. “So from that standpoint, literally everyone gets to be involved in solar.”