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.”

Biden's border woes show no signs of abating as Republicans take House

Haisten Willis

December 01, 03:00 AM December 01, 03:00 AM

The Biden administration's southern border woes continue as a group of federal law enforcement officers balk at its latest plans and Republicans are set to take over control of the House of Representatives in January.

Illegal border crossings have soared since President Joe Biden took office, reaching a record 2.76 million in fiscal 2022, which topped the previous record by more than 1 million. Now, U.S. air marshals are planning to stage an open rebellion against Biden over a plan they say would strip 99% of commercial flights from federal protection ahead of the holidays.

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“The rank and file air marshals are going to refuse to deploy and risk termination,” David Londo, president of the Air Marshal National Council, told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “You’re almost going to have a mutiny of a federal agency, which is unheard of.”

The air marshals have been ordered to leave their assignments and go to the southern border to help respond to the situation. Londo said the work they're assigned is often menial, such as "heating up sandwiches," driving immigrants to the hospital, and waiting inside.

The overseeing agency, the Transportation Security Administration, said in a statement that the claims of air marshals doing menial tasks are "entirely inaccurate and does not reflect the critical and professional law enforcement role these officers perform."

However, the standoff demonstrates a continued unraveling of the southern border situation, argues Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation's Border Security and Immigration Center. She places the blame firmly at Biden's feet.

"It demonstrates that the Department of Homeland Security is running out of employees to send to the border to support the administration’s open border policies," she said. "This border crisis is unsustainable — both for American communities but also for DHS employees. The Border Patrol has reached a historic number of agent suicides during this administration. Time and time again, this administration shows no concern for their agents or employees; it is clearly willing to sacrifice them at the Left’s alter of open borders."

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was pressed on Biden's border policies during Wednesday's briefing and defended the administration's actions.

"The president has secured record levels of funding for the Department of Homeland Security," said Jean-Pierre. "We have over 23,000 agents working to secure the border. We've taken thousands of smugglers off the streets, and we're cutting down on asylum processing times."

Jean-Pierre pointed to Republicans for not supporting legislation to fix the immigration and "secure our border." However, the number of crossings has soared since Biden took office, even without legislative changes.

Republican lawmakers have been furious at Biden's handling of the southern border for months, saying the situation amounts to chaos that is putting undue pressure on border communities. Govs. Greg Abbott (R-TX), Doug Ducey (R-AZ), and Ron DeSantis (R-FL) have sent buses and planes of volunteer immigrants to major cities in an attempt to draw attention to the situation, which the White House described as an inhumane political stunt.

Now, the GOP is set to take over the House, giving it another avenue to apply pressure.

"A Republican majority House of Representatives will certainly hold hearings and conduct oversight to investigate and expose what the Biden administration has been doing during this crisis," Ries said. "It is imperative that Congress withhold funds from the administration that would further any of its open border processing."

The border is also expected to become a talking point in the 2024 presidential election, in which the Republican nominee is sure to hammer on the situation as a campaign issue.

Boy Scout troops support save travellers following teach derails in Missouri

Heather Hamilton

June 28, 10:49 AM June 28, 10:49 AM

Two Boy Scouts of America troops are becoming credited with assisting passengers just after an Amtrak educate derailed and hit a dump truck in Missouri.

The troops, who ended up aboard the Chicago-sure coach Monday, smashed windows to aid pull folks out of the coach autos and set their first-help schooling to use when they waited for initially responders to arrive, according to a report.

A single scout, a 15-12 months-aged boy, reportedly situated the driver of the dump truck, who experienced been ejected into a close by ditch through the crash, and applied first aid, attempting to stabilize the driver just before he died from his injuries.

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The two Boy Scout troops, Troop 73 and Troop 12, bundled 16 boys and 8 leaders. They have been on their way dwelling to Wisconsin, adhering to a backpacking trip in New Mexico.

Two leaders suffered injuries, which include damaged bones, broken ribs, and a punctured lung, and were being taken to a clinic for procedure. A single of the boys was also injured, but the extent of his injuries and latest problem are unknown.

At least three persons, which includes the dump truck driver, died in the crash, and 50 other individuals ended up reported to have been wounded.

The Southwest Main Amtrak prepare was carrying 243 passengers and 12 crew members at the time of the wreck, Amtrak officials explained.

In September, an Amtrak teach derailed in Montana, killing a few folks.

Plane 'mistakenly' enters airspace of Biden's Delaware residence: Solution Services

Jenny Goldsberry

June 04, 03:43 PM June 04, 03:43 PM

An airplane that brought about President Joe Biden to evacuate his personal home "mistakenly" entered the airspace earlier mentioned the Delaware seashore home, the Solution Assistance said Saturday.

The personal plane had "mistakenly" entered the protected spot higher than the property in Rehoboth Beach front, Delaware, soon just before 1 p.m. because the pilot was not on the right radio channel, prompting the relocation of the president as a precautionary measure, Secret Support Main of Communications Anthony Guglielmi verified.

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The aircraft was "instantly escorted out of restricted airspace," and the Top secret Provider will job interview the pilot, Guglielmi claimed.

When the airplane was detected, Rehoboth Beach Law enforcement shut down Rehoboth Avenue in the afternoon. Biden subsequently arrived at the Rehoboth Fireplace Station via motorcade shortly afterward. Sometime immediately after his departure, the avenue opened back up.

Biden headed to Delaware on Thursday immediately after delivering remarks calling for far more stringent gun command. He is outpacing his predecessors on family vacation time, owning recorded an estimated 188 full or partial days absent from the White Property, 130 of which were spent at his Delaware homes.