The California Energy Commission last week added another $260 million for electric vehicle charging infrastructure to the state’s planned $2.5 billion investment in transportation electrification over the next decade. Questions remain, however, about whether the state can install enough chargers, sell enough EVs and build sufficient generation, storage and transmission capacity to meet its ambitious goals.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown set a target l in 2018 of putting 5 million zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) on the road by 2030. Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an order Sept. 23 requiring all new passenger cars sold in California to be emissions-free by 2035. (See Calif. to Halt Gas-powered Auto Sales by 2035.)

The funding that the CEC unanimously approved Wednesday is part of its 2020-2023 update to its Clean Transportation Program. “I’m pretty excited about this investment plan, and I think it really aligns well with the governor’s executive order to set a course for 100% zero-emissions vehicles in the next 15 to 25 years,” Commissioner Patty Monahan said.

California currently has more than 725,000 electric vehicles and accounts for half of the nation’s EV sales, yet it remains far from Brown’s 5 million target, let alone meeting Newsom’s mandate.

1M+ Chargers

At Wednesday’s CEC meeting, Patrick Brecht, manager of the Clean Transportation Program, told commissioners California still needs to install about 188,500 level 2 chargers in the next five years to reach the 250,000 that Brown ordered the state to install by 2025.

State agencies have allocated funding for about two-thirds of the chargers including $1 billion for investor-owned utilities to install charging infrastructure and $800,000 from a settlement with Volkswagen over its diesel-emissions scandal. That still leaves a funding gap for nearly 67,000 units, Brecht said.

Closing the funding gap could leave the state with less than a quarter of the more than 1 million public chargers it may need to achieve its ZEV ambitions, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

In August, NREL research engineer Eric Wood told the CEC that if the state has 5 million EVs by 2030, it will need up to 1.15 million charging spots, including as many as 300,000 level 2 chargers for apartments, 358,000 chargers at workplaces and 413,000 chargers in locations such as shopping centers and movie theaters. (See California Needs Huge Number of EV Chargers.)

Additionally, NREL estimates that millions of future EV owners will likely need to purchase fast chargers for their homes.

Selling enough EVs also remains a problem. Automakers need to double the pace of EV sales to deliver 5 million by 2030, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which regulates vehicle emissions, told the CEC in August.

At the time, five weeks before Newsom’s order, CARB presented a scenario in which all vehicles sold in the state would be EVs or plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2035, calling it an “extreme sales trajectory.”

‘You Can’t Even Keep the Lights On’

Procuring sufficient electricity to meet charging demand may be another obstacle to Newsom’s order.

California experienced energy emergencies in August and September, and CAISO anticipates capacity shortfalls through summer 2023. The state is waiting for hundreds of thousands of megawatts of battery storage to come online in the years ahead as it attempts to transition from its reliance on natural gas to wind and solar generation.

Load-serving entities are required to serve retail customers with 100% carbon-free energy by 2045 under Senate Bill 100.

After the governor’s order, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler wrote to Newsom questioning his decision.

“Your state is already struggling to maintain reliable electricity for today’s demands,” Wheeler said. “California’s record of rolling blackouts — unprecedented in size and scope — coupled with recent requests to neighboring states for power begs the question of how you expect to run an electric car fleet that will come with significant increases in electricity demand when you can’t even keep the lights on today.”

Others have expressed concerns about whether California can supply enough energy to charge so many EVs.

The U.S. Department of Energy asked its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to study the impacts of a large influx of EVs on the bulk electric system.

In October 2019, PNNL staff scientist Michael Kintner-Meyer presented preliminary findings at Infocast’s EVs and the Grid forum in Los Angeles. Kintner-Meyer said EV owners could either soak up the state’s abundant solar power in the daytime by charging at work or further strain the grid by charging their vehicles at home during peak demand in the late afternoon and early evening.

The shortages in August and September occurred in the early evening hours. CAISO calls the period the net demand peak time, when solar drops offline but demand remains high during heat waves. That time, around 7 p.m. in summer, is also called the neck of the duck in California’s “duck curve” load profile.

“Early-morning charging is beneficial for [California’s] duck curve, [but] coming home and plugging in for California is really detrimental,” Kintner-Meyer said at the Infocast summit.

In its final report released in July 2020, the PNNL team said the Western Interconnection likely will have sufficient resources to accommodate 9 million EVs by 2028 even if most people charge their cars immediately after getting home from work.

The study assumes normal operating conditions including weather — not the extreme heat events the West experienced in August and September.

Natural gas plants throughout the West, plus battery storage in California and hydropower in the Northwest, can probably provide sufficient energy under normal conditions to meet the additional peak demand from EVs, the authors found.

Transmission constraints into California, however, could prevent load centers such as Southern California from meeting EVs’ additional demand, the report said.

“At the maximum number of [light-duty vehicles], the authors found transmission congestion to be the limiting factor, which means that there are some available power plants in the WECC, but the electric power could not be delivered to the load centers because of transmission limitations,” it said. “The largest transmission congestions were in California.”

Constraints on transmission pathways into California played a role in the August and September shortages, CAISO found. (See CAISO Says Constrained Tx Contributed to Blackouts.)

Solar ‘Overbuild’ Needed

While the NPPL study said solar plus batteries could meet the state’s EV charging demand, CAISO leaders have warned that far more renewable generating capacity in addition to the current excess solar may be needed to charge batteries to meet evening peaks.

After the August blackouts, then-CAISO CEO Steve Berberich said that to avoid outages, the state needs 12,000 MW of battery storage and an “overbuild” of solar and wind generation to charge them. California currently has 200 MW of battery storage.

Resource planning, Berberich said, “must be reformed so that every hour of the year is properly resourced.”

CAISO spokeswoman Anne Gonzales said the trio of organizations responsible for grid planning must still determine what upgrades Gov. Newsom’s order will require.

“The governor’s order requiring new vehicles to be zero-emission beginning in 2035 will require a high level of analysis and collaboration among state agencies, load-serving entities and stakeholders,” Gonzales said in an email.

The California Public Utilities Commission assesses capacity needs and orders procurement by IOUs. The CEC forecasts long-term energy demand. And CAISO incorporates the information into its transmission planning process.

“We will continue our coordination with the state to ensure that these needs are factored into load forecasting and resource planning decisions, and then considered in transmission planning,” she said.