Heavy-duty electric trucks are rolling out across the country. But “the electric grid upgrades and equipment needed to plug them in aren’t,” writes The Wall Street Journal (July 17, 2023).
As automakers deliver new electric trucks to fleet customers, parking lots that once needed enough power for a few floodlights now might need to draw as much power as a skyscraper. But the necessary grid improvements could take years. In January, California utility PG&E told some large fleet customers they wouldn’t be able to charge trucks for a few years during summer afternoons when California electricity use peaks. Capacity upgrades would take at least until 2026, said PG&E.
Similar issues are popping up across the U.S. as firms place larger EV truck orders. “One or two trucks, everybody’s got. It’s when they try to do their fleets,” said the CEO of Exelon, an eastern U.S. utility company.
The challenge is especially acute in California, where drayage trucks, which carry containerized cargo to and from ports and rail centers, face a looming deadline. The state will require any new drayage trucks to run on electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. California also plans to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars, pickup trucks and SUVs by 2035 and require all new medium- and heavy-duty truck sales be zero-emissions by 2036.
Electric trucks have the potential to reduce air emissions for communities by eliminating diesel use. Trucks represent 6% of the vehicles on California’s roads, but a quarter of the state’s on-road greenhouse-gas emissions. California forecasts it will have 180,000 medium- and heavy-duty zero-emission vehicles by 2030 that would need 157,000 chargers, many of those at depots operated by the fleet owners. There are fewer than 700 chargers at depots now.
Fleet owners must figure out how to install chargers at their depots, a complex engineering and power management task. Chargers will also be needed on the road but there is no network of electric truck stops yet. California has the most EV fast chargers for regular passenger cars nationally, but those sites aren’t designed to fit industrial vehicles. As fleets add trucks they will need to draw at least 6 to 8 more megawatts of power. That’s about 1,000 homes.
Classroom discussion questions:
- As a fleet manager, what is your strategy?
- As a power company such as PG&E, what is your capacity strategy?