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Stories You May Have Missed This Week: EV, Charging & Intelligent Electrification Roundup (11/25/25 Edition)

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If you only skimmed the headlines this week, you probably saw more “EV politics” than actual infrastructure news. Underneath that noise, there’s a different story: utilities rolling out demand-charge–friendly tariffs, states and the feds funding managed charging and V2G, microgrids scaling fast thanks to Big Tech and new tax credit markets, and private 5G quietly becoming the nervous system for ports and industrial campuses.


Here’s a curated set of stories—each with a short summary and link—you can mine for board decks, investment memos, and site-level playbooks.


EV Infrastructure & Fleet Programs


1. National Grid’s demand-charge workaround for commercial sites: National Grid’s commercial and fleet EV programs in New York and Massachusetts pair make-ready funding with a new EV Phase-In Rate that swaps traditional demand charges for a blend of reduced demand charges and TOU energy rates. For large depots and high-utilization public sites, that structure directly attacks one of the biggest killers of EV charging ROI: surprise demand charges.


2. PG&E’s turnkey EV Fleet program for depots: PG&E’s EV Fleet program offers a “soup-to-nuts” package—site design, permitting, construction, activation plus rebates—to help fleets electrify with lower upfront capital and predictable costs. For corporate, municipal, and school bus depots, it’s effectively a template for how utilities can co-invest in charging while de-risking grid impacts.

3. Federal playbook for managed charging at scale DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) has published guidance on managed EV charging for federal fleets and a 2025 Federal Workplace Charging Program Guide. Together they spell out how large campuses can use smart charge management to avoid demand spikes, align with facility peak loads, and design tariff-aware charging schedules—playbooks that private owners can adapt almost one-for-one. 

4. New York’s $3M bet on EV–grid integration tech New York State has awarded $3 million to three projects that help integrate EVs into the grid, plus another $4 million earmarked for technologies that tackle data and operational challenges around managed charging. The grants target solutions that let utilities monitor, aggregate, and shape EV load in real time—exactly the kind of tools fleet depots, campuses, and multi-site portfolios will need as chargers proliferate.


5. Communities Taking Charge: $43.7M for e-mobility + resilience The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation’s Communities Taking Charge Accelerator is a $43.7 million FOA backing 25 projects that expand e-mobility access (cars, bikes, and small vehicles) and strengthen local energy resilience. Early awards include at-home and neighborhood charging pilots that explicitly link transportation equity with grid flexibility—useful models for cities and public-sector landlords trying to solve both problems at once.


Microgrids, Storage & the New Finance Landscape


6. Microgrids double as Big Tech’s workaround—and a CRE hedge A recent Reuters deep-dive finds U.S. microgrid capacity could hit 10 GW by the end of 2025, up from 4.4 GW in 2022, as data centers, manufacturers, and utilities race to secure reliable power amid AI load growth and extreme weather. States like California, Texas, Colorado, and Georgia are layering their own microgrid incentives on top of federal funds, positioning microgrids as both resilience insurance and a way to bypass sluggish interconnection queues.


7. DOE’s $8M C-MAP program for community microgrids DOE’s Office of Electricity has committed over $8 million to 14 projects through the Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership (C-MAP), aiming to bring microgrids to remote and vulnerable communities. The program pairs direct funding with lab-level technical assistance, offering a blueprint for how municipalities and community campuses can scope, finance, and govern microgrids that serve critical facilities. Leo Lithium+1


8. Cubic’s integrated campus: solar, storage & 121 smart chargers At Cubic Corporation’s Kearny Mesa headquarters in San Diego, PowerFlex designed, built, owns and operates a system that combines a 960–962 kW solar carport, a 280 kW / 540 kWh battery, and 121 Level 2 smart charging ports with zero upfront cost to the tenant. The project is projected to save about $93,000 per year and $3 million over its lifetime, while managing demand charges and sharing renewable energy benefits with employees—an “energy-as-a-service” model tailor-made for multi-tenant campuses.


9. Tax credit markets are booming for solar + storage deals Crux’s mid-year report, covered by pv magazine USA, says the U.S. transferable clean-energy tax credit market is on track to approach $60 billion in 2025, nearly double last year, with solar and storage leading the way. Paired with Crux’s own explainer on project finance and evolving lender criteria, it’s clear that well-structured distributed solar, storage, and microgrid projects have an increasingly deep pool of buyers—good news for owners looking to make projects “finance-ready” instead of carrying all the tax equity themselves. Read more: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/09/24/us-clean-energy-tax-credit-market-nears-60-billion-in-2025-led-by-solar-and-storage/



Connectivity as Critical Infrastructure


10. Private 5G turns a UK freeport into a 1,700-acre testbed Verizon and Nokia are rolling out six private 5G networks across Thames Freeport’s logistics and manufacturing hubs in the UK, covering about 1,700 acres of ports and industrial sites. The networks use local 3.8–4.2 GHz spectrum and edge-5G systems with full geo-redundancy to support AI, IoT, automation, and real-time logistics—a template for large logistics parks, ports, and industrial campuses anywhere.

11. Peel Ports’ private 5G blueprint for automated terminals In the UK, Peel Ports and Logicalis have deployed a private 5G network at the Port of Liverpool as part of the ON-SIDE initiative, targeting full end-to-end automation of time-critical port operations. The case study shows how private 5G can underpin crane automation, yard management, video analytics, and safety systems—exactly the kind of “invisible infrastructure” that ports, rail yards, and industrial landlords will need as they electrify equipment and layer on more sensors. 

Read more: Revolutionising Port Operations: How Private 5G Is Powering Automation at Peel Ports – Logicalis

12. Why private 5G matters for industrial campuses: Wavesight’s October 2025 piece on “The Future of Industrial Connectivity: Why Private 5G Matters” walks through five standout use cases across manufacturing, logistics, energy, and mining, arguing that private 5G is rapidly becoming the preferred option where Wi-Fi and public 5G fall short. For owners of large industrial parks and mixed-use districts with outdoor operations, it’s a concise primer on why connectivity design now belongs in the same conversation as power, water, and parking.  Read more: 

 
 
 
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