The grant is for the Rural Electrification And Charging Technology (REACT) project to deploy charging technology on farms and at other rural locations that is responsive to dynamic grid signals.
Incentives from the grant will help customers to transition their on-farm fleets to the Monarch MK-V, fully electric, driver-optional, smart tractor, and other electric vehicles. The grant will reduce the cost of deploying charging infrastructure while responding to dynamic prices and participating in demand response programs. This will increase customers' financial returns on investing in electrification. The grant also helps to fund Gridtractor and Monarch software systems and customer success teams that will help customers to manage charging in response to grid signals while prioritising the work that their tractors and vehicles need to do.
Vehicle-to-Everything, EVSE and charge management technology developed by consortium partners under 'On Farm Mobile Microgrids,' a second CEC-funded project, will enable customers to not only charge at the most beneficial times but export power to the grid or local loads when energy is scarce or expensive. This greatly expands their financial opportunities and the value provided to the grid and the state.
The consortium will not only help customers respond to the existing slate of rates and programs but will also work to increase and improve them. Valley Clean Energy, whose successful AgFIT pilot led regulators to initiate a large, statewide expansion of dynamic rates, will engage with Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) to help them develop win-win programs for their members and participating customers.
"California farmers are already seeing significant savings from early deployments of our electric, smart MK-V tractors. In the last two years, Monarch Tractor has deployed more than 400 MK-Vs, resulting in the offset of more than 850 tonnes of CO2 emissions across 42,000 hours of tractor operations," says Praveen Penmetsa, CEO and co-founder of Monarch Tractor. "But larger-scale deployments require more charging infrastructure, and this grant will help us to significantly improve customers' economics of adoption."
