Highland Park, NJ – How can electric vehicles help drive down electricity costs for everyone in New Jersey?

This was the subject of the discussion hosted by Duke Farms, a center of the Doris Duke Foundation, on Friday, December 12, 2025.  The answers, and a plan to execute, will help inform the incoming Administration on the most urgent priorities for advancing medium and heavy-duty transportation electrification while at the same time, drive down the cost of electricity.

The incoming Administration should seize the opportunity:  allow electric vehicles with their powerful batteries, to provide services to the New Jersey electric distribution system.  Using electric vehicles in this way can meet the moment – making electricity more affordable for everyone – a dominant topic in our recent gubernatorial election.

“Right after Superstorm Sandy we saw solar panels unable to provide the electricity those panels were generating….no fault of technology; the systems were designed, by regulation, to shut down when the grid shut down,” explains Pam Frank, CEO of ChargEVC.  This was a safety issue to ensure linemen wouldn’t be injured if that solar electricity flowed back over the distribution network.  Frank continues, “By 2012, the regulation no longer made sense.  Technology had evolved to keep the electricity safely on the customer’s side.  Today we have big batteries sitting in driveways often during times of the day when everyone needs electricity – peak times for the electrical grid. If during those times we can use the car batteries to power our homes, everyone wins so let’s make that happen.”

“We should do the easy stuff first,” says ChargEVC President Doug O’Malley; continuing, “Making homes disappear from the grid during peak times of electricity usage can be done today – no change in regulations needed.  We need education and incentives to provide the right signal to drivers.  Duke Farms, our host for this conversation, has had first-hand experience which we were able to see for ourselves after our conversation.”

Duke Farms has coupled a solar array with batteries and are experimenting with storing and releasing solar electricity to power their property.

“At Duke Farms we create space for practitioners, researchers, and community partners to share insights that deepen understanding of sustainability challenges,” explains Margaret Waldock, Executive Director at Duke Farms.  She continues,  “As a living laboratory demonstrating climate solutions across natural systems and energy, we support conversations that highlight how evolving technologies may relate to community needs and ecological resilience. This discussion offered valuable perspectives, and we were pleased to host an exchange of ideas that connects with our ongoing work in climate change resilience.”

This discussion also informs a third update of the ChargEVC roadmap, which has served as a guide for the electric vehicle bill enacted into law in January 2020.  As of October 1, 2025, New Jersey had 251,401 electric vehicles registered and a total of 1,840 public charging ports at 308 locations. “These facts on the ground exist in a large part because of the goals in the legislation, and the state resources that were directed at incentives to help customers acquire the vehicles, and developers to build the charging infrastructure,” says NJ State Senator Bob Smith, a co-sponsor of the bill.

In addition to those 1,840 public charging ports, New Jersey has awarded a contract to make use of the first tranche of nearly $105M of federal funds through the National Electric Vehicle Incentive (NEVI) program to build public fast chargers on major roads in the state.