Pathways to procurement: Driving e-mobility through partnerships

For utilities considering adopting an EV charging program, ABB e-Mobility’s Todd Shock has one piece of advice: go big, or go home.

“What we’ve learned with utility programs for what we look at in a sponsorship, the same principles hold true with any of our segments,” Shock said. “Public charging, fleet charging – it starts with top-up executive sponsorship. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in terms of the energy and transportation, transition that we’re going through. It’s not experimental. It’s not a pilot. It’s going to take a huge commitment from the top.”

Todd Shock, channel sales manager, ABB e-Mobility, chatted with John Engel, DISTRIBUTECH and POWERGRID editor-in-chief at the POWERGRID International Interview Studio at DISTRIBUTECH International 2024, discussing the makings of a good EV program, the most challenging steps along the way, and the power of partnerships.

One of the most challenging steps in the EV program journey is dealing with lead times, Shock said, and learning to plan around them.

“There’s a lot of upstream equipment that’s required. There is a load that’s required from, the utility itself. So oftentimes you run into what’s called lead time problems, but really it becomes a planning problem. So if you can get ahead of the planning problem as a utility, as a fleet owner, you’re in a much better position to really dictate your own lead times.”

Partnerships were a common theme at DISTRIBUTECH 2024 – even between those that could be seen as competitors. These are an inseparable component of EV programs, Shock argues.

“Partnerships are crucial. You think about everyone in the value chain from site designers, installers, OEMs like ourselves who provide the hardware, the technology, the services, and the connected services,” Shock said. “From the utilities perspective, they really need that path of procurement laid out in the beginning and really a crisp understanding of how they’re going to leverage the value chain and most importantly, when they’re going to engage those members of the value chain.”

Shock’s next piece of advice for utilities? “Engage us first,” he said.

“We have world-class partnerships with everyone within the value chain,” Shock said. “We can help you from day one. Mitigate lead times, mitigate mistakes from, you know, overbuilding your charging deployment under building, having pilots that aren’t as successful as you would like, and really, transitioning to EV at scale.”

Originally published in POWERGRID International.