ESIG’s Grid Planning for Electric Vehicles Task Force recently released a report, Charging Ahead: Grid Planning for Vehicle Electrification, examining the key challenges for distribution system planners in anticipating and integrating EVs both today and the increasing number on the horizon.
This task force was an opportunity to engage on the hard questions facing the industry with some of the brightest individuals who are working on this topic daily. The diverse task force brought together individuals who approach vehicle electrification from very different perspectives – from utility planners to charge point aggregators and from vehicle manufacturers to transportation planners. I believe that the report balances technical insights with identifying areas where policy decisions will be helpful for grid planners. This blog post describes my personal perspective and some of what I learned as the facilitator of the task force.
The needed proactive investments lack an easy path forward
Positioning utilities as proactive enablers of EVs will be critical to meet the pace of electrification forecasted in certain states. However, forward-looking build-outs of infrastructure carry the risk that the infrastructure will be underutilized. Much of our work focused on figuring out how to improve confidence in needed “no regrets” grid upgrades in the near term. More work is needed to address this real challenge, particularly from a policy and regulatory perspective. The prickly issues lie in who pays the upfront capital costs associated with prospective widespread adoption of EVs, while improving equity and avoiding barriers to technology adoption for low-income consumers. The task force considered these grid upgrade costs holistically along with the costs of gasoline and other sectors, going beyond how we usually think in grid planning.
EV charging can be a hyper-local challenge
Throughout the last year, EVs have gone through the full technology hype cycle; recent headlines have subdued some of the expectations established just a year prior. But regardless of the ultimate fuel mix powering our vehicles or even the path we take to get there, EVs can present challenges at highly local levels: it takes just a few vehicles charging simultaneously to overwhelm grid edge equipment. EV adoption is often clustered in specific neighborhoods or workplaces. These “hot spots” of EV charging can pop up anywhere – and quickly.
Historically, my sense was that grid planners were worried about potential substation upgrades or new substations that EVs might require. However, hot spots can be even more local than that. Service transformers and the distribution lines themselves can experience thermal overloads before the substation is overwhelmed. It can also happen quickly, with EV adoption in some areas far outpacing typical utility planning cycles. When we recognize the quantity of this type of equipment across the country, the scale of the challenge becomes obvious. A wholesale replacement of all distribution equipment is unreasonable, but reactive strategies may lead to lengthy delays and equipment failures. As we think through this hyper-local challenge, the interconnectedness of everything also becomes a challenge. Consolidated Edison (ConEd) shared a case study of how electrifying a cluster of EV fleets can lead to changes across the network with charging needs affecting more than one feeder.
Seasonality matters for EV charging
EVs take more energy per mile driven in the winter. There are battery technology realities that lead to less efficient charging in cold temperatures, but vehicle occupants also use heating powered by the on-board vehicle battery to keep the cabin comfortable.
The temperature-sensitivity of EV charging is perhaps more apparent when one considers vehicle miles driven. Folks generally drive more when it’s nice out. These driving patterns will affect the power system when EVs go on road trips en masse, but they will also appear in less subtle ways. Work by multiple utilities has shown the seasonality of charging around college campuses, ski towns, and resort destinations. The locational seasonality will have large implications for translating load forecasting to grid planning at both the bulk and distribution levels. When you combine weather-dependency of the EV charging efficiency with the weather-dependency of our driving habits, load forecasters can’t simply repeat a charging profile for each day of the week.
Smart charging can be effective
Data on smart charging can be hard to find, and much of the data that is available comes from pilot projects and early adopters. Still, every single smart charging pilot that I was able to find showed real promise for customer responsiveness to pricing programs, regardless of the objective of the program. There are more advanced concepts that effectively reward customers for having their car plugged in and leave the grid-aware charging optimization up to the aggregator and the utilities in the area. Given its promise, smart charging should be considered a different category than traditional demand-side management, with rules and programs designed to take advantage of the flexibility.
Caveats are warranted about smart charging, and the report spends quite a bit of time on the topic. While promising, we need to be careful to realize that smart charging is not a silver bullet that will cure all of our grid planning challenges. The report states in the executive summary that “the optimal grid plan will likely be some combination of smart charging paired with infrastructure upgrades.” It also identifies the variety of things left to learn about smart charging, including performance under grid stress and extreme weather events like hurricanes and wildfires.
Trucking is the 800-pound gorilla in EV planning
Between corporate decarbonization objectives influencing scope 3 emissions, public policy goals in leading states, and the economics of fleet decision-making, trucking can electrify very quickly. The electrification, of course, will only work if the grid can support it; there may be a misalignment of the timing between how quickly truck fleets can be ready to electrify and how quickly the electric infrastructure can be built to support those ambitions.
Trucking is also full of quirks, and there can be misalignments across commercial landowners, company ambitions, and their trucking fleets. Put simply, landlords, as the ones who would install charging infrastructure, can be a problem for electrifying fleets, unless discussions happen early and plans are made that can work for all parties. These discussions will be key to ameliorating the unknowns about electrifying trucking.
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I encourage you to read through the full report for more technical insights. We still have much to learn about grid planning for vehicle electrification, but there are opportunities today to take steps that will improve our foundation. I hope to continue these conversations as we continue to learn together.
Sean Morash
Principal
Telos Energy
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