As you may have heard, California just recently announced that it will ban the sale of new gas cars beginning in 2035. Now it will need to get its grid ready for the EV onslaught.
Thankfully, California has about 14 years to prepare for the possibility of all new car sales being electric by 2035. Over the course of the 14 years, the transition from gas cars to EVs can and will happen gradually. As more people begin to drive EVs, more charging stations will be needed.
California already has many more electric cars on the road than any other US state. For this reason, it’s proactively proceeding with caution related to EV charging. In fact, California officials have told residents to avoid charging their cars during certain peak times. Instead, the EV owners should charge at other times to ensure that the grid doesn’t get overwhelmed, which should help ensure that all EV owners can get their vehicles charged successfully.
According to Autoblog, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) requested that people conserve energy from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM over the three days of the upcoming Labor Day Weekend. California called it a Flex Alert, which probably means it’s asking people to “flex” their usage. The state is in the midst of a heatwave, so taking the appropriate precautions makes sense.
California will have to closely monitor usage over such holiday weekends to begin to get an idea of grid upgrades that will become necessary going forward. If the state is going to have a fleet primarily consisting of EVs by 2035 and beyond, it will need a grid to support those EVs.
With that said, many people across the US are already part of electric plans that have peak and off-peak pricing. Many EV owners already pay attention to when they should and should not charge their cars based on pricing and demand. It would only make sense if, in the future, every electric car owner across the country will be on specific plans that work to save them money and share the grid successfully based on the time of day.
Post time: Sep-02-2022