meet the WInners
of the
2025 PLMA Awards
of Excellence!
Arizona Public Service & Energy Hub
for APS’ VPP & Load Shaping: Enhancing Reliability through Customer Collaboration
APS marked five years of commitment to 100% clean electricity by 2050 and to date has achieved 51% clean energy. By collaborating with its customers, APS has supported its clean energy goal by operating one of the largest VPPs in North America. With the VPP, APS can shift load using behind-the-meter resources to achieve predetermined load shapes during flexibility events. Given Arizona’s extreme temperatures, APS plans to continue refining and testing new use cases for dynamic load shaping. With its demand growth increasing to >13,000 MW of energy by 2038, the utility is also committed to building more customer-collaborative VPP solutions to address extreme weather, congestion, renewable generation variability, and rising energy costs.
Baltimore Gas and Electric & WeaveGrid
for BGE’s Smart Charge Program
BGE has emerged as a national leader in EV load management with its Smart Charge Management program (SCM), demonstrating significant results through innovative managed charging techniques. As the first managed charging program of its kind to be scaled into a permanent offering, BGE’s SCM serves as a model for distribution-integrated EV load management for utilities nationwide. With high customer satisfaction rates and well-established cost-effectiveness, BGE secured approval from the Maryland Public Utilities Commission to
expand its SCM to a permanent program with a target of 30,000 participants by 2027.
California Public Utilities Commission & Energy Solutions
for TECH Clean California Heat Pump Water Heater (SGIP HPWH) Program
TECH Clean California, launched by the CPUC in December 2021, promotes clean heating technologies through incentives for heat pump water heater (HPWH) installations. The program has funded over 11,000 installations resulting in significant greenhouse gas savings. As of October 2023, new mandates required that HPWH customers also enroll in demand response programs. To enable this, the team provided additional education to contractors which has led to high enrollment rates and 91% customer satisfaction. In December 2024, the contractors were asked to provide “proof of enrollment” for their installations which has continued to enhance program participation and contractor engagement. Today, the HPWH contractors are evolving into demand response leaders in their own right.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District & DNV
for Telematics-based Residential Managed EV Charging Program
DNV and SMUD excelled in load management through their innovative Residential Managed EV Charging Pilot, which employed a randomized control trial to evaluate solar consumption, system peak reduction, and transformer overload mitigation. With around 1,200 EVs enrolled across four automakers, the interim evaluation revealed an estimated benefit of $60 per vehicle annually, mainly from avoided distribution overloads. The pilot identified opportunities for performance enhancement by demonstrating the opportunity for auto OEMs to continue investing in load management capabilities that are built into the vehicle, and leveraging existing vehicle telematics as a cost-effective approach for scaling managed EV charging.
learn more via PLMA's upcoming webinars
These winning initiatives will each be featured in a PLMA Load Management Dialogue (webinar) this Summer and Fall. All PLMA webinars are recorded and are also made available on PLMA’s YouTube Channel, and broadcast over its podcast, “PLMA: Load Management Dialogues.” Please check the PLMA Calendar for broadcast dates.