The electric vehicle boom will account for over half of U.S. car sales by 2030. That might strain our aging fossil fuel-based power grid. The Princeton University Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Analysis Toolkit, or REPEAT, predicts an 18% growth in domestic power demand by 2030 and 38% by 2035. This is a substantial difference from the 5% rise over the prior decade. “So we’ve got a lot of power demand coming to this country when we didn’t have any for the last, like, 25 years,” said Grid Strategies Founder and President Rob Gramlich.
Electrification alone cannot decarbonize
Some sections of the economy, including stoves and space heaters, are electrifying, but the transportation industry is leading the way. Princeton estimates that light-duty vehicles, excluding heavy trucks and airplanes, will need 3,360% more power by 2035. Electrification alone cannot decarbonize without a massive renewable energy build-out. Gramlich: “So we have both supply-side and demand-side drivers of big grid needs.
California will need to invest $50 billion by 2035
That requires more high-voltage transmission lines to transport electricity from rural wind and solar power plants to demand centers, smaller distribution lines and transformers for last-mile electricity delivery and inverters to allow customers with home batteries, EVs, and solar panels to feed excess energy back into the grid. It’ll be costly. The California Public Utilities Commission commissioned grid analytics startup Kevala to estimate that California will need to invest $50 billion by 2035 on distribution grid modifications to reach its lofty EV ambitions.
Major grid infrastructure needs
Electric car charging is energy-intensive. An owner of a new Tesla Model 3 who drives the national average of 14,000 miles per year would use about the same amount of electricity charging their vehicle at home as they would on their electric water heater over a year, and about 10 times more than a new, energy-efficient refrigerator. Large electric cars like the Ford F-150 Lightning require more power than central AC units in large homes.
PG&E director of clean energy mobility Lydia Krefta said the utility has 470,000 electric vehicles linked to the grid in Northern and Central California and wants 3 million by 2030. How PG&E manages the EV transition might be a model for the nation as it covers 1 in 7 electric vehicles in the U.S. The task is difficult. A four-year financing cycle for grid infrastructure enhancements ended in 2021 for the utility. Krefta indicated the funds would not be enough.
“A lot of the analysis that went into that demand came from, like, 2019 or 2020 forecasts, in particular some of those older EV forecasts that didn’t anticipate some of the growth we believe we’re more likely to see now,” Krefta said. PG&E is asking for many state and federal incentives to accomplish its electrification goals.
“I think right now people have an overly simplistic view of what electrification of transportation means,” said Kevala CEO Aram Shumavon. “If done right, it will be phenomenal; if mismanaged, many people will be upset, which is a risk”.
The way to satisfy rising electricity demand
Shumavon warned that if grid infrastructure doesn’t keep up with the EV surge, drivers may face charging issues including lengthy lines or limited charging times. An overloaded system is more susceptible to harsh weather and outages, as California experienced in 2020. Adding energy sources, ideally green ones, is the easiest approach to satisfy rising electricity demand. Solar and wind resources are generally more rural, whereas coal and natural gas plants are straightforward to put near population areas.
The U.S. needs new high-voltage transmission lines
That means the U.S. needs new high-voltage transmission lines to move solar and wind between counties and states. Gramlich stated we spend a lot of money fixing and improving old lines but barely build new ones. I estimate we need $20–30 billion a year in additional capacity, line miles, and delivery capacity. We’re spending almost nothing on that.”
Building new transmission lines, which sometimes straddle many counties, states, and utility service areas, requires regulatory approval and financing. If a line crosses two or three dozen utility territories, they can recover their costs on their local system, but they throw up their hands when it benefits three dozen utilities and who pays, how much, and how do we decide? Gramlich stated.
Permitting also delays things
Permitting also delays things. Identifying new transmission equipment, its cost, and who will pay for it is necessary for all new energy projects. The number of projects delayed in this phase is huge. The lineups generate more renewable power than the system today. The Inflation Reduction Act may reduce emissions by 1 billion tons by 2030, according to Princeton’s REPEAT study. According to this research, transmission infrastructure build-out might lose almost 80% of these reductions if it doesn’t double its historical growth rate of 1% each year.
An interim period
Projects are undertaken to create energy infrastructure faster. In May, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., proposed a permitting reform bill after similar efforts failed last year. President Joe Biden supports the plan, which would speed up permitting for all energy projects, including fossil fuel infrastructure. However, many Democrats regard the package as too pro-fossil fuel, making politics difficult.
Even if permitting speeds up and we spend large on transmission immediately, it will take years to create the infrastructure. Because no other resources will be available, distributed energy resources will play a very active role in managing that process, Shumavon said. Residential solar and storage systems can stabilize the grid by generating power and selling excess to the grid.
Automotive manufacturers are now adding bidirectional charging capabilities to their EVs, allowing consumers to utilize their massive battery packs to power their houses or sell electricity back to the grid. Tesla plans to add this feature in the future, while other cars like the Ford F-150 Lightning and Nissan Leaf already provide it.
There may be more attention on energy efficiency and timeliness. PG&E is considering optimizing charging times for large electric vehicle fleets. “One thing we’re trying to do is work with some of these companies that are putting in substantial loads to provide flexible load constraints where we can say you can only charge 50 EVs at 7 p.m., but all 100 at 2 a.m.,” Krefta said.
Charging time limits need to be short
Krefta expects charging time limits to be short and said PG&E would use dynamic pricing to entice users by raising electricity costs during peak demand and lowering them during off-peak hours. What do you need to do in your garage to power your home with your car? How can you use your car to charge while renewables are clean and cheap and discharge back to the grid at night? Krefta stated these questions would shape the future green grid.
