If you survey the field of punditry regarding electric vehicles, you might conclude that a battery-powered future is still a long way off and may not materialize at all. But ask anyone in the auto industry and the inevitability of electrified transport becomes clear. It all comes down to economics. EVs are already cheaper to operate than gas and diesel cars, and may soon be cheaper to buy, even without government subsidies.
We’re still relatively early on the adoption curve, though, and there are a few obstacles standing in the way. One, surprisingly, is the too-frequent unavailability of existing chargers.
As Ram Ambatipudi, VP of Business Development and Utility Engagement at EV Connect, observed at ABB Customer World (held in Houston March 4-7), the problem isn’t the charger itself. That equipment will last for decades with minimal maintenance. Far more often it’s a broken connector “nozzle,” some kind of IT failure in the charger’s communications, or maybe a burned-out display.
“The user experience for public charging today can be terrible,” he explained.
Even putting technical failures aside, the patchwork of charging network operators means dealing with multiple vendors’ apps and entering your payment info multiple times to use chargers on different networks.
On the supply side, meanwhile, the challenges facing utilities are building. While EVs represent a tantalizing new source of demand, the influx of large loads at the grid edge driven by imminent fleets of EVs presents a host of operational challenges.
Karen Hsu, Senior Director of Business Development for Utilities at eMotorWerks, an Enel X company, pointed out that a typical home sees their consumption shoot up as much as 200% during peak times of electricity usage when an EV joins the family. The impact on the local distribution system can be substantial, but she also noted that while most residential chargers will be Level 2 going forward, the growth in high-power DC fast charging represents an even greater challenge for grid operators.
DC fast chargers operate at up to 350kW today and could go higher. The impact is already visible in the “dragon curve,” a new term that describes the spiky top of a utility’s load curve that is created by DC fast chargers turning on and off over the course of the day. Managing the rapid swings in demand from EV charging, then, will require a more agile approach than the utility industry has historically used to match supply with demand. Grid storage—perhaps co-located with high-power chargers—demand response, and smart charging will all play a role.
The good news is that residential charging is a great candidate for load control. Most EV charging (80%) happens at home, and most of that at night. This offers the utility some flexibility in managing charging demand without encroaching on the EV owner’s expectations for vehicle availability. Furthermore, Hsu asserted that regions across the world are making ambitious plans to decarbonize both energy and transportation systems, creating an immense opportunity for EVs to enable a more cost-effective, cleaner electricity grid as energy storage facilities at a fraction of the cost of using only stationary energy storage.
Today, the average EV stays plugged into a home charging station up to 90 percent longerthan the time needed to fully charge the vehicle, and smart charging can dynamically manage EV charging loads to balance grid demand, ultimately reducing wholesale energy costs and mitigating the intermittency of renewables. That’s going to be important because, as ABB’s Steve Bloch noted, industry analysts estimate EV charging demand could be as high as 733 TWh by 2030.
The future is here, and it’s electric.
