Electric Era's Energy Management System Correctly Predicts All Five PJM 5CP Events, Mitigating Capacity Charges for EV Charging Stations

SEATTLE, Oct. 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Electric Era launched the EV charging industry's first 5CP energy management program which correctly predicted all five PJM 5CP (coincident peak) events, saving their EV fast charging customers tens of thousands of dollars on capacity charges. Electric Era operates EV fast charging stations for retailers and charging networks across the United States. Three stations are in PJM territory and therefore operate under PJM's 5CP utility tariff methodology. These types of peak demand/capacity charge programs are expected to increase as rising energy demand increasingly strains the grid.

"We've seen time and again that demand charges and capacity charges single-handedly put an EV charging station's P&L underwater," said Quincy Lee, CEO and Founder of Electric Era. "Our team continues to build intelligence into how our system operates that reduces operating costs and increases station profitability. This is a great example of our commitment to making EV charging a profitable business for our customers."

Grid operators like PJM and ERCOT leverage coincident peak (CP) charges to retroactively allocate costs associated with system-wide peak demand intervals. In PJM, a site's average load during the summer's five highest demand hours sets its Peak Load Contribution (PLC), which determines its capacity charges for the following year. Importantly, PJM provides no advanced notice to operators — operators who are not able to anticipate these events and reduce grid draw lock in a year of elevated capacity costs from just a few hours of load.

Electric Era's patented battery-backed EV charging system intelligently and rapidly manages how the station draws power across sources (primarily the grid and battery) and then distributes that power to vehicles. Earlier this year, Electric Era built the energy management system (EMS) capability to predict and rapidly react to PJM's 5CP events, leveraging the battery to minimize grid demand from the EV charging site during the five 1-hour periods.

Based on preliminary data, this summer's peak events occurred on July 1, July 2, July 15, July 16, and September 1; each from 5-6pm EDT. Electric Era's EMS predicted with 97% confidence that these five coincident peak events would happen at these times, preconditioned the battery to be ready to deploy, and dynamically reduced the station's grid limit.

At one site, across the five coincident peak events, the station delivered an average of 72 kW to vehicles while only drawing 9 kW from the grid. With the site's PLC-based capacity rate of $16.28/kW/month, reducing the PLC by 63 kW saves about $12,000 annualized. Had the station demand spiked during that same hour, the savings could have been many times that amount.

Electric Era's tight coupling of hardware and software enables them to make operations a software problem. And with advanced software, like their ML algorithm to predict coincident peak events, they help customers effectively manage operating costs resulting in more profitable EV charging stations.

ABOUT ELECTRIC ERA
Electric Era delivers intelligent infrastructure solutions that unlock the biggest bottleneck to a dynamic, electrified, 21st century economy. Founded in 2020, the company provides vertically integrated systems combining advanced battery storage, intelligent software control, and rapid deployment expertise—with more than 30 deployments to date. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. For more information, visit www.electricera.tech or follow on X, Instagram and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Electric Era