EV push threatens to strain power grids and threaten reliability

Breanne Deppisch

April 12, 05:35 AM April 12, 05:50 AM

The Biden administration's push for widespread electric vehicle adoption threatens to place significant strain on aging power grids, threatening capacity during hours of peak demand and raising the risk of blackouts.

To date, the administration has announced tens of billions of dollars in federal spending to help entice families and states to embrace electric vehicles as it seeks to meet its target of having electric vehicles make up 50% of new car sales by 2030.

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The biggest incentives include the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicle purchases in the Inflation Reduction Act designed to mitigate high upfront costs for consumers, as well as the $7.5 billion in funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dedicated to building out a national network of 500,000 public EV charging stations.

An estimated 3.2 million EVs are on the roads in the United States today, representing approximately 1% of vehicles in the country.

That number is slated to rise sharply in the coming years: The Edison Electric Institute estimated that by 2030, the number of EVs in the U.S. is expected to grow to about 22 million vehicles — a massive increase that will correlate with a strong rise in demand on U.S. power grids.

But without proper planning, widespread adoption of electric vehicles could add severe strain to already-stressed U.S. power grids — threatening transformer blowouts, electricity shortages, and even requiring the use of costly new power plants to meet the heightened demand.

How much additional power EVs will require is difficult to quantify. A 2020 estimate from the Brattle Group suggested as much as $125 billion would need to be invested in grids to meet the demand.

That number includes $30 billion to $50 billion for additional power generation and grid storage, $15 billion to $25 billion for transmission and distribution upgrades, and $30 billion to $50 billion for EV chargers and infrastructure, the report found.

Otherwise, the threat of power shortages will become increasingly frequent.

The risks increase if grids fail to add the necessary transmission to bring clean energy resources online, if EV users fail to heed mitigation strategies such as charging their vehicles during the day, or if grid operators move too quickly away from fossil-fueled or "dispatchable" resources in an effort to decarbonize the grid.

Ronald Schoff, the director of the Electric Power Research Institute, told reporters this month that decarbonizing U.S. power grids while also ensuring that they can withstand growing EV demand is likely to prove a “daunting," though not altogether impossible, challenge.

“In order to hit those kinds of figures, we see a rapid buildout of renewable energy — from the 230 gigawatts [of renewable power] we have today to over 600 gigawatts potentially by 2030,” Schoff said, citing ERPI's modeling.

“We are effectively rebuilding an airplane that is in midflight,” he said.

“We are trying to switch the fuel, and we're trying to change out the wings, the wheels, the engine, all as we go,” he added. “Which is possible — but it's complicated.”

Why it matters

The supply-demand imbalance on U.S. power grids has been on stark display in recent years, especially in certain states — threatening rolling blackouts or fears of complete collapse.

Last September, a historic heat wave descended on California, bringing blistering triple-digit temperatures and pushing energy demand to a record of 52,000 megawatts.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) declared a state of emergency, and the state's grid operator activated an emergency conservation program that stretched beyond a week, successfully but narrowly avoiding more blackouts like those that roiled the state in 2020.

Earlier this year, federal regulators approved a request to extend the life of California's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant — a once-unthinkable request from Newsom and other Democrats made in the name of reliability concerns.

Reliability concerns are also top of mind in Texas after a devastating 2021 winter storm caused 4.5 million Texans to lose power and a near-collapse of the state's power grid.

As a result, state lawmakers are weighing new bills that would shift the state’s power generation away from renewables and toward natural gas, threatening its status as a wind and solar energy powerhouse and possibly driving up costs for consumers.

Proponents of the bills say adding more fossil-fueled or "dispatchable" generation to the grid will help protect against outages from other extreme weather events.

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a new report that it is necessary to develop “demand mitigation strategies” to help reduce EV strain on grids as the rate of adoption increases.

One key mitigation strategy is to invest in strategically located public chargers downtown and near workplaces to encourage charging during the day, when electricity demand is lower.

These need not be the faster, Level 2 variety chargers, the researchers said. Rather, they found that the addition of even slow public chargers at workplaces can sufficiently help reduce the strain on power grids.

Workplace chargers also help use renewable sources, such as solar power, which is often in abundant supply during the day, they noted.

Oftentimes, excess solar generation is wasted in the hours of peak generation because most grids lack the battery or storage capacity required to keep it online for very long in the evening.

Solar power oversupply during daylight hours can also cause fossil fuel-powered plants to reduce their power generation to maintain the supply-demand balance, thus resulting in a resource shortage during the evenings, when solar generation abruptly retires and household demand sharply increases — the phenomenon known as the “duck curve.”

And since workplace charging cannot be the sole source of charging, researchers also recommended "delayed home charging," under which drivers would program their EVs to charge by a fixed amount overnight.

The delayed home charging solutions can eliminate peak demand from EVs by "well over 50%," the report found.

Without these mitigation strategies, they said, as much as 20% more power generation would need to be installed for power grids to keep up with the added demand from EVs.

Failure to adopt such mitigation strategies would also increase electricity prices relative to today's costs, thus raising costs of EVs over time compared to conventional gas-powered vehicles and “potentially providing a new barrier to further electrification of the transport sector," they wrote.

A Stanford University study published last fall in the journal Nature Energy cited similar concerns.

Researchers found that rising levels of EV ownership in the West could cause electricity demand to increase by as much as 25% by 2035 overall, should drivers continue the dominant trend of charging their EVs in their homes at night.

In order to reduce the strain on grids, the Stanford report also called for “significant” investments to build out more public charging infrastructure, particularly downtown and near places of work.

California and other Western states should also consider adopting new time-of-use electricity pricing structures to encourage daytime charging, they added.

Their recommendations go beyond just the West Coast, where EV adoption is highest: They warned that similar supply-demand gaps are growing for all U.S. power grids as electrification spreads, particularly due to the rise in EV sales.

“All states may need to rethink electricity pricing structures as their EV charging needs increase and their grid changes,” the study’s lead author, Siobhan Powell, said in a statement.

The MIT researchers found that workplace charging during the day reduced grid demand during evening "peak hours" by a whopping 70% in New York and 80% in Dallas, the two locations it studied closely for the report.

Decarbonizing the grid

Increasing the share of EVs in the U.S. to 50% compared to the just 5% of EVs on the road today will require a “rapid” buildout of renewable energy resources and transmission to supply grids nationwide, according to researchers.

But that's especially true the Biden administration hopes to deliver on its pledge to halve U.S. carbon emissions by 2030 compared to 2005 levels as part of the nation's commitment under the Paris climate accord.

The U.S. transportation sector accounts for 27% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, meaning that electrifying the fleet is key if the U.S. hopes to deliver on its goals of fighting climate change and meeting its target set under the Paris Agreement.

Doing this presents myriad challenges for utilities, generators, and grid operators, which must develop planning models that anticipate both the rise in energy generated by EVs and what the charging patterns will be, including during hours of peak demand.

“I think that’s one of the challenges,” said former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee, who oversaw key efforts to help reconfigure and prepare power grids for electrification during his tenure.

“Charging at the workplace, charging cars during the day — that anticipates that you drive to work and park in at work," he said. "And what if you're in an urban environment, where parking your car at the office or plugging it in there is not an option? Similarly, for residential charging — what about people who don't have garages and who don't have the ability to plug in when they come home?”

Chatterjee, now a senior adviser at Hogan Lovells, said he is optimistic that grid operators can anticipate and meet the heightened demand from EVs and add clean energy to the grid to do so, though he said these dual challenges also underscore the importance of adding transmission to the grid.

“As we just electrify more in society, we’re going to have to understand not just the surge in demand — the timing and when those surges in demand come and be ready for that. I think the system can handle it,” he said.

“But I think that also argues for why we need more transmission to get more clean power onto the grid,” he added. “So that we can kind of ameliorate some of these situations.”

Russia launches 'one of the most massive missile attacks' in the war, Ukraine says

Mike Brest

December 29, 11:26 AM December 29, 11:26 AM

Russian forces launched one of their largest aerial campaigns on Thursday, though Ukraine's military said it was able to shoot down 65 missiles.

Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said that infrastructure in Kyiv, in the north-central part of the country, and Odesa, in the south, were damaged in a missile barrage and subsequently were experiencing emergency power outages.

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"Today the enemy carried out another massive attack on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine," Halushchenko said in a post on Facebook. "Unfortunately, there is some damage to generation facilities and power grids."

Earlier this week, Halushchenko said that the power situation across the country remains “really difficult” and warned that New Year's Eve could see "maximum damage to the energy system."

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said they were able to shoot down 65 drones, composed of both Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones that have been provided to Russia.

"Russian terrorists have been saving one of the most massive missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion for the last days of the year. They dream that Ukrainians will celebrate the New Year in darkness and cold. But they cannot defeat the Ukrainian people," Ukraine's Defense Ministry said in a statement on Twitter. "Today, Ukraine's Air defense forces shot down 54 Russian missiles and 11 Shahed-131/136 drones."

For three months, Russia has launched waves of missile attacks at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in what U.S. and Western officials say is a strategy designed to weaponize the winter climate to demoralize the population. The strikes, which are launched on roughly a weekly basis, frequently result in parts of the country losing electricity, heat, and running water, and the ensuing damage is putting extraordinary strain on Ukraine's energy grid.

The Western world has pledged more than a billion dollars to support Ukraine's efforts to secure and rebuild its power grid.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier this week United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should mediate a “peace” summit between his government and the Kremlin, and he'd like to see it happen by the end of February. However, he demanded that Moscow would need to face prosecution for war crimes in an international court before Ukraine would extend an invitation to the Kremlin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Kuleba’s proposal, telling state media Ria Novosti that they “never followed conditions set by others. Only our own and common sense.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin also claimed days ago that he’s ready to engage in talks to end the war and blamed Kyiv for not taking that step, saying in a state television interview that Russia is “prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes with all the participants of this process,” and he argued, “It’s not us who refuse talks, it’s them.”

Ukraine reports Russian strikes on key infrastructure

Shana Donahue

October 31, 05:07 AM October 31, 05:07 AM

Officials in Ukraine reported a barrage of Russian strikes on critical infrastructure in several cities, including Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said part of the Ukrainian capital was cut off from power and water supplies due to the attacks.

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In Kharkiv, two strikes hit critical infrastructure facilities, according to the authorities, and the subway stopped operating. Officials also warned about possible power outages in the city of Zaporizhzhia resulting from the strikes there, according to the .

A video that reportedly shows black smoke rising from a dam substation after an attack was posted to Twitter on Monday. The hydroelectric plant is located in Zaporizhzhia.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to President Zelensky, said around 40 missiles had been fired at Ukraine in the early hours, the Daily Mail reported.

Deputy head of the presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said emergency power outages were being implemented due to “massive shelling of critical infrastructure.”

This is the second time this month Russia has attacked Ukrainian infrastructure.

“Another batch of Russian missiles hits Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Instead of fighting on the battlefield, Russia fights civilians. Don’t justify these attacks by calling them a ‘response’. Russia does this because it still has the missiles and the will to kill Ukrainians,” Dmytro Kuleba, minister of foreign affairs for Ukraine, said in a tweet.

Georgia officers want federal assist to pay for electrical vehicle infrastructure

T.A. DeFeo | The Centre Sq. contributor

August 08, 11:00 AM August 08, 11:00 AM

(The Heart Square) — The Ga Division of Transportation hopes to secure federal funding to spend for a network of electric powered motor vehicle charging stations throughout The Peach State.

GDOT has submitted the state's Electric powered Auto Infrastructure Deployment Approach necessary to tap into federal funding for acquiring the community. Georgia officers assume to secure $135 million from the National Electric Motor vehicle Infrastructure Method Application.

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Careers Act, handed in 2021, set up the NEVI to fund states' EV charging infrastructure.

"Georgia has a fast growing electrical motor vehicle ecosystem that is highlighted by a robust EV organization community and the actuality that our condition is a chief in the Southeast when it comes to electric vehicle registrations," GDOT Commissioner Russel McMurry said in a assertion. "With the requires of both equally the community and non-public firms in intellect, the department submitted this program with enter from a broad array of stakeholders which include utilities, EV makers, neighborhood-primarily based teams and non-public sector companions."

Ga leaders have specific EV firms to track down facilities in the condition. Ga officials have introduced more than 20 EV-linked tasks given that 2020, including offering $1.8 billion in incentives to lure Hyundai Motor Group to track down its initially totally focused EV and battery producing facility in the state.

GDOT officials stated the state has the most EV charging stations of any Southeastern point out. Ga has about 30,000 EVs and a lot more than 1,300 publicly offered EV charging stations with around 3,400 personal stores.

A Joint Review Committee on the Electrification of Transportation will, in element, examine how to establish electric powered automobile charging infrastructure across Georgia.

A business Level 2 charging station costs concerning $1,500 and $6,500, and such a station can ordinarily accommodate two automobiles concurrently. The charging time ranges from a few to 8 hours, based on the auto, Grant Feek, the CEO of Tred, an on-line car or truck marketplace, told The Heart Square.

"The ideal ratio — as established by EV and transportation groups — is just one charging station for each EV on the road," Feek mentioned. "The present-day actual variety is considerably under that.

"If all of Georgia's 3.3 million certified motorists transformed to an EV, Georgia would will need to install 825,000 charging stations to satisfy the optimal ratio of a person charging station for each and every 4 EVs," Feek included.

Charging companies this sort of as Chargepoint and EVgo or EV brands like Tesla own a lot of publicly obtainable charging stations, and those people firms pay back for the installation, Feek reported. Municipalities, developers or companies that want to give absolutely free charging to their citizens and buyers could possibly fork out to put in charging stations at their areas.

SEE IT: Hoover Dam transformer bursts into flames

Victor I. Nava

July 20, 03:55 AM July 20, 03:58 AM

A transformer caught hearth at the foundation of Hoover Dam on Tuesday, but the incident did not disrupt electric power staying produced at the facility and no one particular was hurt.

The fire and apparent explosion at the base of the 726-foot-substantial hydroelectric electric power making facility was caught on video clip by tourists who shared footage on the blaze on social media. The hearth was extinguished close to 30 minutes right after the blast and posed no chance to the power grid, according to officials.

"At about 10 a.m. (PDT) the A5 transformer at Hoover Dam caught hearth and was extinguished by the Reclamation/Hoover fireplace brigade at roughly 10:30 a.m.," Jacklynn Gould, regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation, reported in a assertion.

"There are no injuries to visitors or staff. There is no risk to the electric power grid and electricity is even now becoming generated from the powerhouse. We are investigating the bring about of the hearth and will provide supplemental updates as they are available," Gould's statement concluded.

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Online video footage of the incident clearly show a fire and black billowing smoke rising from just one of the dam's transformers in the vicinity of exactly where the Colorado River flows into the dam.

Visitors browsing the facility found on the Arizona and Colorado border mentioned they heard an alarm seem and felt the floor rumble beneath them, according to the .

“A ton of black smoke just exploded in the air. It seemed practically like a mushroom and then a fire adopted,” William Herro, 13, of San Francisco, instructed the .

Hoover Dam commenced operating in 1935. The facility is regarded as a National Historic Landmark, and it supplies energy to 8 million persons in Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California. The enormous dam is operated and preserved by the Bureau of Reclamation.