Will the grid be able to handle all of the electric vehicles we will have in the future?

Will the grid be able to handle all of the electric vehicles we will have in the future?Yes, if we prepare well.

The transition to a highly electrified future won’t happen overnight. Even if, by some magic, all new car and light truck sales were 100% electric tomorrow, it would take over a decade for all the cars on the road today to become even 90% EVs. That is because vehicles are very durable goods—the average car or light truck remains on the road for over 12 years and some of them are on the road much longer than that. In a non-magic scenario, sales will ramp up to 100% electric vehicles between now and 2035 in order to meet state and federal greenhouse gas reduction goals for 2050. And in that case, we should get close to 100% on-road electric cars by 2050.

So, we have time to make sure the grid is ready, but we can’t squander the time we have.

We can’t accept an unreliable grid—not for EV charging or anything else! We need electric utilities and regional grid operators to invest in more energy capacity and robust transmission and distribution infrastructure. Grid operators have started planning in many places for increased electricity demand from the electrification of vehicles as well as appliances and other end-uses, including the Midcontinent grid region (aka MISO), and all will need to up their game. We also need grid operators to invest in grid resilience, so power outages have less impact and electricity can be restored more quickly if it does go out.

Additionally, we need grid operators to update their approach to grid management to be more dynamic to match an increasingly dynamic energy supply and demand paradigm. Historically, electric utilities could reliably predict how much electricity their customers would need over the course of a day far ahead of time, and day-to-day needs were roughly consistent within a particular season of the year. These days, both supply and demand are more dynamic throughout the day and day-to-day as we incorporate more and more utility-scale renewable energy generation as well as distributed resources behind the customer’s meter (e.g., rooftop solar, battery storage, and electric vehicles).

With a dynamic approach to grid management, a 100% renewable electricity grid can accommodate a highly electrified future. UCS analysis has demonstrated as much.

Indeed, electric vehicles can support the integration of renewable energy and the stable operation of the grid by leveraging electric vehicles as a flexible load and, for EVs that can export power, a source of electricity storage.