Electric Vehicles: Is Oregon’s Grid Ready?
About a decade ago, Oregon only had about 500 registered electric vehicles on our roads – today, that number is nearing 50,000. With Oregon’s bold EV adoption goals, including 250,000 registered zero emission vehicles on our roads by 2025, how might that affect Oregon’s electricity grid? Will there be enough power to keep the state moving?
The Oregon Department of Energy asked those same questions in our 2020 Biennial Energy Report and the 2021 Biennial Zero Emission Vehicle Report.
Over the next few years, the overall effect of electric vehicles on the grid is expected to be fairly minimal. But as more Oregonians make the switch to EVs, utilities are already working on potential solutions to meet the increased demand. And the good news is that utilities have experience planning to meet rapidly-growing demand, much like adoption of refrigerators back in the 1930s and more smart appliances and devices in recent years. To handle peak demands, the electricity sector has long engaged in multi-year capacity planning to forecast future peak demands on the grid and to identify whether new resources (like new energy-generating facilities) are required to meet those demands. Utilities will consider the potential arrival of new EV charging demand and incorporate it into their resource planning.
In the residential sector, EV loads are not unusually large compared to other loads, like refrigerators or air conditioners, and are in fact lower than other consumer needs like water and space heating. Multiple EVs charging together, however, could quickly consume the energy capacity of a local distribution transformer, which connects homes and businesses to the distribution grid. Utilities are responding by working to identify where EVs are charging so they can plan for necessary transformer or other upgrades. The Oregon Department of Energy has an electric vehicle mapping project that will provide consumer-owned utilities (like People’s Utility Districts, Cooperatives, and municipalities) with information about where EVs are currently charging on their systems to help with this effort.
In addition to making sure grid equipment is ready, utilities can also use other methods to accommodate more EVs, including electricity rate design, managed charging times, and energy conservation, among other solutions. For example, utilities can provide lower “off-peak” energy rates to encourage vehicle charging when overall demand is down, such as overnight. Managed charging, often referred to as grid-to-vehicle charging, allows a utility to communicate with a charger to slow down or speed up the rate at which an EV charges to match the grid’s supply and demand.
There will be additional considerations for larger vehicles, like buses and delivery trucks. Oregon’s utilities work closely with transit districts, school districts, and other fleet managers to ensure organizations and businesses are adding charging in the best possible way to meet charging needs. As part of this process, utilities may incorporate upgrades to the local distribution system to meet the new load demand and to also prepare for additional EV loads that are likely to occur in the same area.
Meanwhile, to inform the Oregon Department of Transportation’s incentive programs, the agency is meeting with Oregon utilities to assess existing electricity capacity on distribution systems to identify potential EV charging locations.
As more Oregonians make the switch to electric vehicles, we do expect to see higher electricity demand – but utilities are already working on solutions to take that increased demand into account to ensure their services remain reliable for the power Oregonians need. And thanks to Oregon’s clean energy policies, including a 100 percent clean target by 2040, Oregonians will be charging their vehicles with an increasingly-clean energy source. For some Oregonians in consumer-owned utility territories like People’s Utility Districts, municipalities, and cooperatives, they are already driving on almost 100 percent clean electricity. Learn more about Oregon’s electricity mix on our website.