In our next installment of Staff Picks, we sit down with Nicole Lepre. Nicole is a policy analyst at Atlas based out of Washington DC. As the mastermind behind utility data at Atlas, Nicole gets utilities.
Favorite dashboard / feature on EV Hub?
Nicole: Utility Filings Dashboard because it aggregates data on utility filings and this dataset doesn’t exist anywhere else in this way. Anyone who has tried to aggregate data on utilities appreciates the value of the Dashboard because it is very manual to find the dockets and filings that you might need (they are buried in long PDFs on utility websites).
One data nugget or piece of information from that dashboard?
Nicole: The total approved investment is $3.7 billion from investor-owned utilities for transportation electrification. That could support almost 8,000 DCFC and just over 312,000 Level 2 charging stations. The only way to get these totals is to collect data on every investor-owned utility filing, so they are really valuable numbers.
One tip or recommendation for using EV Hub effectively
Nicole: A reminder that you can export anything to Excel so you can understand what is going into the aggregated numbers and see more details. If you hover over the image, dots appear in the right hand corner. When you export the data, you can see it broken down by individual program elements and filter for what you might want to see.
What is a story from EV Hub you worked on that you are proud of?
Nicole: We looked at a sample of utility progress reports including how many chargers have been installed and what utilities in the sample had spent on their approved utility programs so far. The story, A Sample of Utility Progress Reports features data on how utilities are going in fulfilling their transportation electrification pledges. There are a number of interesting findings including that we were able to collect data on the cost of a number of level 2 charging projects that indicated it was more expensive than some research had anticipated.
One lowkey EV Hub feature or dashboard to highlight
Nicole: The equity page on the utility filings dashboard (click on the Utility Filings Dashboard and then click through to the Equity page with the Next arrow). The page summarizes investments carved out for underserved communities in utility programs.
TV or film recommendation?
Nicole: I recently started Abbott Elementary and I like it a lot so far!
