Grid Costs Affecting EV Charging Development

Finally, friends! Some data to help us tackle the big question we all want answered - are Africa's grids actually ready for a shift to electric vehicles???? My latest research with colleagues from University of Massachusetts Amherst | Research was just published in Nature Portfolio Scientific Reports. It is the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of electric vehicle fleet expansion on electricity grids in African cities. We build granular models that simulate traffic patterns, EV charging, and transformer utilization, to analyze the effects of progressively higher rates of EV adoption on bulk electricity supply and transformer overloading, key indicators of grid stability. We sourced vehicle ownership data from USAID, power consumption & transformer data from KPLC, and hourly traffic data from Uber. Taking Nairobi, Kenya as a prime case, we find that adoption of electric vehicles across the public transportation and commercial fleet sectors generally improves grid conditions in the city by adding consumption during periods when the grid is otherwise significantly below peak capacity. However, widespread conversion of private vehicles – the largest vehicle class in Nairobi – can substantially exacerbate peak electric demand, leading to the accelerated overload of transformers, forcing both an increase in electricity outages as well as very expensive early equipment replacement costs. Introducing coordination logic into the charging model reveals that even at moderate of fleet conversion, coordinated charging could reverse the situation, instead representing an avoided cost saving from early equipment replacements. These findings demonstrate the critical nature of a managed and coordinated transition to electric mobility in Africa. Improved planning, and engagement across key stakeholders including the electric utility, the municipal transport authority, regulators, and national policy makers is key! The first EV study of such granularity for Africa, our model can be replicated to explore grid dynamics in other African cities. Please check out our paper if you are following trends in electric mobility and watch out for more! What other questions about EVs and the grid would you like us to research? Share your ideas below! https://lnkd.in/dURjyv5E

Are time-of-use (TOU) rates good or bad for the electric grid? While TOU rates aim to reduce system-wide peaks, they can increase grid stress and costs under many current designs—especially with the rapid growth of #electricvehicles and #electrification. Here’s why: Residential TOU peak periods typically end around 7-9 pm (survey of 30 large utilities). Many EV owners start charging immediately after off-peak rates begin, but these periods are based on system-wide loads, not local distribution peaks. Now, picture a neighborhood with 10 homes on a shared transformer, where 5+ homes have EVs. With each EV drawing around 7 kW, the load can more than double each household's load. The result? Transformer failures are the first sign of strain. As electrification grows, the stress will extend to feeders, substations, and beyond. So, should we abandon TOU rates? Regulators favor them because they shift load off-peak, are low cost, and are backed by historical results. But the more compliance, the more severe the local #grid stress. Another challenge: shifting peak periods. As #renewables like #solar and #wind expand and grid-scale #batteries become common, peak times are moving. California’s "duck curve" shows demand now shifting to different parts of the day. We now need to encourage EV charging mid-day in solar-rich areas! Constantly re-educating consumers on changing peak/off-peak times is impractical. What’s the fix? OPTION 1: Move off-peak to midnight. Some utilities now start off-peak for EVs at midnight when household demand is low, reducing but not solving the surge problem. OPTION 2: Stagger TOU start times. Spreading start times across households could ease local strain but is complex and unpopular with regulators. OPTION 3: Adopt dynamic solutions. The best option for now is managed EV charging (until we get #V2G). Customers set a "ready by" time (e.g., morning), and utilities optimize charging based on battery status, grid conditions, and costs. This keeps costs low for both consumers and the grid and the consumer gets a full charge without any intervention. 3A: Whole house vs. EV specific rates? Different appliances have different characteristics, time-based value, and needs. I think it makes sense to treat EV pricing separately that the other appliances in the house, just like we do for solar rooftop. While dynamic solutions like managed charging are the future, a mix of pricing options is essential. No single approach will work for every customer or address the grid’s evolving needs. Your thoughts? P.S. I've included a link to a longer PLMA (@PLMAflm) discussion about electricity pricing that includes ideas from myself and Ahmad Faruqui. #energy #utilities #gridmanagement #TOU #EVcharging #tesla #rivian #electricvehicles

I spent my last few years at RMI focused on grid integration of electric truck charging and the mismatch of timelines of electric truck adoption - both for compliance and economic reasons - and the time it takes to provide the grid assets to provide power for truck charging. The entirety of the policy and regulatory framework for truck electrification focused on the vehicle and little to none focused on the grid. That contradiction couldn't last forever and this Canary Media article suggests that the tensions are becoming untenable in California, where e-trucks adoption is highest. The dynamics are pretty simple, the grid takes a lot of time and money to upgrade and the upgrades have to be undertaken years before they will generate any revenue. If fleets have to pay for the upgrades on top of the already high capex for electric trucks, the cost will drown them. If those costs are socialized to all electricity payers, California's already high electrical costs will continue to rise. PUCs are in a tricky position, they must protect electricity consumers from undue cost increases, but they also must enable the transition to electric trucks which has been mandated by state policy. So, what to do? Despite the doom and gloom, the problem isn't intractable, grid capacity isn't as simple as a topic as it might seem. There is a lot of latent grid capacity locked away. A circuit being overloaded doesn't mean it is always teetering on the brink, rather once in a while it gets pushed to its maximum capacity, generally on a hot summer day. PG&E has a pilot called Flex Connect that allows EV chargers to use grid capacity when it's available and restricts use when it's not - these smart approaches unlock a lot of latent grid capacity. The gap can be covered by DERs like solar, storage and managed EV charging. Utilities must invest full throttle in the grid, but it won't be enough alone. Fleets and DER providers like truCurrent have a role to play in the solution. Working together as partners, we can build the grid we need in the time frame we need it without breaking the bank. https://lnkd.in/gW23MV5a

Fleet electrification could unlock €246bn in operating savings across Europe by 2030. Yet 45% of logistics companies still run zero electric vehicles, and only 30% of electric truck sales today are cost-competitive with diesel. Most fleet operators sit somewhere between those two numbers, and the reasons repeat from one conversation to the next. What operators want is simple. A cost per mile they can defend to a CFO. A payback year they can put in a board deck. Confidence the vehicle holds its value, which 84% of operators name as their biggest worry. Chargers that work every morning. In the end the decision comes down to a number, and that number has to hold for seven years. What keeps getting missed is the second half of the bill. Most TCO models price the truck and the electricity, then stop. The misses show up later and they are expensive. Demand charges that never appeared in the business case can add $2,400 a month at a single depot. A transformer sized for the pilot can trigger a $180,000 upgrade when the fleet scales. Grid connections run 12 to 36 months while delivered trucks sit parked. Chargers get placed where they block yard flow at shift change. Residual value gets treated as a footnote until remarketing day. Every one of these is a system cost, and vehicle-only models miss all of them. Subsidies are also going away. US federal vehicle credits ended last September and the charging infrastructure credit followed this June. In more markets every year, the math has to stand on its own. The fix is specifying the whole system together. Truck, charger, tariff, battery buffer and charge management, matched to the fleet's real duty cycle. A battery-buffered depot charges fast on the grid connection you already have, cuts peak demand, and moves energy into the cheapest hours. Smart load management keeps one bad hour from wrecking a month's utility bill. Roughly 70% of new charging installations last year included dynamic power allocation because operators learned this the hard way. This is also why charging-as-a-service and full turnkey models are growing fast. Operators do not want to act as their own systems integrator. They want one accountable partner, a design fitted to their operation, and a number that still holds when the first utility bill lands. Every fleet's number is different. Duty cycle, tariff, local grid and dwell time move the answer more than the badge on the truck does. That is why I build tailor-made TCO calculators, fitted to each fleet's vehicles, duty cycle, tariff and market, covering the trucks, the chargers and the battery buffer in one model, so the decision gets made on the operator's own data before the capital gets committed. The fleets that come out ahead will be the ones that priced the whole system before signing for the first truck. #FleetElectrification #TCO #EVCharging #EnergyStorage #BESS

These three things are killing scalable EV charging in apartments… 1️⃣ Not enough electrical capacity at the building level. Most existing buildings don't have the electrical capacity to support widespread Level 2 charging at 40-50 amps per port. Fixing it means new transformers, upgraded service drops, permitting delays, and sometimes $100K+ in utility work. Time-to-revenue: 15 to 30 months. ROI: Maybe, if you squint hard enough. 2️⃣ Unreliability drives downtime, maintenance costs, and unhappy residents About 20% of chargers are inoperable according to a survey. Most apartment charging setups use shared ports at higher power levels (40-50 amp Level 2) with screens and long cords, and each charger relies on its own cellular uplink. Cellular can be inconsistent. Cords and screens break. Repairs require an electrician, who needs to be called and scheduled for fix-it work. 3️⃣ Sticker shock that stops projects cold. Higher-power Level 2 chargers (the kind that charge in 4-6 hours) can cost $10K to $20K per port when you factor in trenching, permits, panel upgrades, and installation. Most properties can't absorb that, and shouldn't have to. How do we overcome these barriers? ⚡️ Low-power Level 2 chargers (20-35 amps) ⚡️ One per parking space, not shared ⚡️ Individually metered and billed per resident ⚡️ Plug in when you get home and wake up charged ⚡️Resident supplies their cord ⚡️99% uptime, and our charging devices can be replaced in 60 seconds without an electrician. The good news? We've built this model at GoPowerEV, and it's already working in the real world. Cars are parked 12-14 hours at home on average per day. Charging overnight at lower power is actually better for the battery, cheaper to install, and eliminates the "musical chairs" problem of shared charging. We're expanding EV access for the 1 in 3 Americans living in multifamily housing, because everyone deserves the convenience of charging at home.

A few years ago, I sat across the table from a property developer. He had one question: “Can we install fast chargers across all our buildings to attract more EV-driving tenants?” A logical question. But what he didn’t know and what many founders and builders don’t realize is this: Fast charging isn’t free, it comes with a cost. Not just in dollars, but in grid impact, system design, and long-term scalability. Here’s what I told him: → Installing ultra-fast DC chargers (350 kW each) sounds like future-proofing. But when you install 6–8 of them, you’re pulling the same load as a small hospital at a single property. That’s like laying a 6-inch water pipe just to fill a kiddie pool for 10 minutes a week. Yes, the grid can handle that load… But: → Not everywhere → Not without advance coordination → And not without millions in infrastructure upgrades, transformers, substations, panels, the works. That’s a big bet for an asset that may only be fully utilized during peak hours. And if you’re a founder building in energy, EV, or mobility, this should matter to you. Here’s the smarter way: ✅ Low-power Level 2 chargers (3–6 kW) → Charge vehicles overnight, during off-peak hours → Aligns perfectly with how people actually use their vehicles in multifamily housing → Reduces strain on the grid, spreads out demand, and lowers capex → Enables scalability without creating a future bottleneck At Atom Power, Inc. we engineered our platforms with this very challenge in mind. Our systems manage load dynamically, flatten demand spikes, and give utilities predictability. Why does this matter for tech founders? Because building for what’s scalable tomorrow is more important than just reacting to what looks exciting today. Speed feels like innovation. But smart design is innovation. If you’re building in clean tech, EV, or grid tech - my advice: → Don’t copy-paste legacy systems. → Don’t build for the past. → Build infrastructure that behaves like software: intelligent, adaptive, scalable. Because EVs aren’t just vehicles, they’re moving batteries in a distributed energy network. And when done right, they can help the grid; not break it. What’s your take on building scalable charging infrastructure?

Fast charging isn’t being blocked by technology. It’s being blocked by parking lots. Here’s a pattern we keep seeing in real projects: A site wants 120–180kW DC charging Existing building connection capacity: 60–80kW Utility upgrade quote: • Transformer upgrade • Civil trenching • Switchgear replacement • Approval timeline Result: 👉 $80k–$250k infrastructure cost 👉 6–18 month delay 👉 Capex locked into a single location 👉 Utilization risk if traffic assumptions miss And this is before the first vehicle plugs in. So let’s challenge an industry assumption: Why spend $100k upgrading the grid for a $20k charger — when the real constraint is energy availability, not hardware? I recently worked with an operator whose usage profile was: • High frequency vehicle turnover • Short operational routes • Tight parking footprint • Demand shifting between bays weekly Fixed chargers created three problems: 1️⃣ Capital stranded in low-use bays 2️⃣ Inflexibility as fleet patterns evolved 3️⃣ No contingency when vehicles returned at 0% SOC This is where mobile energy infrastructure becomes financially rational — not just technically interesting. For example, deploying a 217kWh mobile charging asset changes the decision model: Instead of trenching: ✔ Deploy same-day ✔ Deliver DC fast charging off-grid ✔ Buffer energy using onboard storage ✔ Redeploy across depots / yards / sites ✔ Recover vehicles without tow dispatch Operational implications procurement teams actually measure: • Avoided civil works cost • Reduced downtime events • Higher charger utilization ratio • Lower stranded infrastructure risk • Faster pilot-to-scale timelines This is why we’re seeing adoption across very different markets: Logistics ports (Sri Lanka) maintaining throughput without grid expansion Mining & heavy equipment charging (Zambia) where no grid exists Bus depots (Brazil) constrained by feeder capacity Nordic freight hubs improving truck turnaround Airport shuttle operations (US) requiring flexible placement Remote agriculture energy support (Australia) Different geographies. Same constraint: Energy mobility > Infrastructure permanence I’m genuinely curious where the industry stands on this: Have you ever killed or delayed a fast charging project because grid upgrade economics broke the business case? I’m sharing deployment ROI breakdowns + site decision frameworks for operators evaluating alternatives — message me if useful. #FleetElectrification #ChargingInfrastructure #Emobility #EVCharging #BatteryEnergyStorage #InfrastructurePlanning #ElectricTransport

Jonathan Lesser and Mark Mills write in the WSJ, the EPA believes EVs will soon be cheap, reliable and easy to fuel. That’s the bet in its new standard for CO2 emissions, which critics rightly call a backdoor EV mandate. The EPA admits it can be met only if EVs compose well above half of new vehicle sales by 2032. Don’t bet on it. Widespread adoption of EVs will require an unprecedented and staggeringly expensive expansion of grids. This means a huge increase in the production of electrical transformers, along with more power plants and transmission lines to produce and deliver energy. This includes upgrading local grid at the roughly 3,000 electric utilities across the country—the wires, poles and transformers. There are 60 to 80 million distribution transformers in neighborhoods, designed for existing loads. Around 1 MM new ones are sold annually, two-thirds of which replace aged-out transformers. Millions more—and heavier—ones will be needed to handle higher power levels and more frequent use. This will also require replacing many of the existing utility poles to handle new transformers’ extra weight. Millions of homes and apartment complexes will also need upgrades to accommodate at-home chargers. Electricians will need to install new circuits for EV chargers, and many older homes will need new power panels to handle increased demand. On-road fueling will also be needed, particularly for the millions of consumers without garages. Replicating the nation’s some 195,000 retail gasoline stations will require far more than the 4,000 charging facilities the FHA has proposed. Thousands of these charging stations will each have the power demand of an entire town. That means more massive upgrades, in this case for higher-voltage grid systems and, critically, thousands of new, large transmission-level transformers. It won’t come cheap. One Energy Dept study estimated some $50 to $125B in infrastructure upgrades will be needed to support EVs composing 10% of all on-road cars. Today, they amount to less than 2%. Achieving the EPA’s goal will require north of $1T in grid upgrades by 2035. Delivery of the largest transformers can take several years, and overall transformer costs have risen 70% since 2018. Replacing tens of millions would require massive quantities of copper, most of which would have to be imported. The process would also exceed the production capabilities of US manufacturers. The US is heavily dependent on imports for large substation transformers, especially from Asia, itself raising obvious national-security issues. To Sum It Up: EV advocates at the EPA suggest their mandates will induce market forces to solve the attendant challenges. That’s a dubious theory. Some behavioral changes might help, such as rationing access to EV charging or reducing the number of cars. Perhaps that’s the real goal. Whatever the motivation, the EPA’s de facto EV mandate is another green fantasy. 🚘 🔌⚡ ♻️ 👀 #energytransition #energy

⚡ What if California could cut EV charging costs 80% without spending a dime? For the first time since 1975, there are no effective federal fuel economy standards. That makes this a moment for California to lead on EV economics, and the answer is already sitting inside our rate structure. Here's the proposal: Align EV charging rates with actual generation costs. California's retail electricity rate of $0.34/kWh is roughly 20% generation and 80% transmission and distribution. California has the highest retail rates in the country and the cheapest wholesale power in the nation. That gap is the opportunity.   If we aligned EV charging with actual generation costs, the EV charging would be about $0.07/kWh. Agree not to charge during 4–9pm and you could get closer to $0.05. That is an 80–85% reduction from current retail charging rates. For drivers, that translates into a similar collapse in fuel costs versus gasoline. This is more powerful than any rebate program we could afford. Do we need to “fund” this discount? No! Plugging in an EV does not magically cause incremental distribution buildout. Current rate design simply allocates embedded distribution costs across kWh sales. It does not follow cost causation. Yet under current rate design, the more your charge, the more you pay more for the same infrastructure. Eliminate that link, and watch EV sales shatter records. We'd need meters and data of course to make this work. A billing program change similar to PG&E's existing BEV rates would cost a few million to implement. In return, fueling costs drop 80% and EV economics become overwhelming. 🚗 The best part is that none of this requires new funding. The low generation cost is already there. We just need the political will to price EV charging based on what it actually costs the grid. If California wants to lead again, this is how. Time to make the grid awesome again and make internal combustion a bad investment. #ElectricVehicles #CaliforniaEnergy #EVCharging #UtilityRates #Electrification

The "Cheap EV Charging" Myth is Ending We've been told for years that charging an electric car overnight is incredibly cheap – like getting a full tank for the cost of a coffee. This promise was a huge draw for EV buyers. But this idea, while not a direct lie, is based on a system that's now under strain and starting to unravel. Midnight Power Surges Threaten the Grid Our strategy of offering cheap night-time rates to ease evening power use has backfired. Instead, everyone's charging their EVs around midnight, creating a new, even bigger power surge. This concentrated charging is pushing our local power grids to their limits. The era of cheap, easy overnight electricity is ending because too many people are using it at the same time. What Happens When Prices Change? As power companies are forced to raise and change prices overnight to handle this new peak, what does that mean for people considering an EV? How do we explain this to buyers who were promised simple, cheap fuel, only to face complicated, changing costs? A Growing Fairness Problem This isn't just about money; it's about fairness. Wealthy homeowners with solar panels and batteries can easily adapt and even profit from these new energy prices. But renters and lower-income families, who rely more on the main grid, will face higher, less predictable bills. We're creating a two-tier energy system based on wealth and property ownership. We Need Smarter Solutions Now Car makers, power companies, and regulators must accept that the old model won't work. We need to quickly shift to smart, fair ways to connect EVs to the grid. This means making two-way charging (where your car can send power back to your house or the grid) standard, offering special, changing rates just for EV charging, and investing heavily in affordable public charging for all communities. The Future of EVs is at Risk If we don't address these issues, the growth of electric cars could stall, undermined by the failure of its most basic promise. Big changes are needed, and they're needed now. What are your thoughts on how we can ensure EV charging is fair and accessible for everyone as we move forward? #EV #EnergyTransition #Inequality #FutureOfEnergy