Governor Gavin Newsom announced the sale of NEW cars and light trucks with internal combustion engines would be banned from 2035. Existing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles on the road would not be banned -- just NEW sales. Sales of used ICE cars will be allowed after 2035. But the goal is to make EVs the dominant mode of transportation. So I would expect California to refuse to register ICE automobiles purchased in neighboring states. starting in 2035.
California must fix its electric power supply before 2035. August 2020 had the first rolling blackouts in about two decades during a heatwave. California has grown its renewable energy generation capacity too aggressively. Too much back up electricity has to be purchased from neighboring states.
Millions of electric vehicles (EVs) on its roads in less than two decades. will add a lot of demand for electricity. Not necessarily during off peak hours. There will be no solar energy to charge EV batteries at night. California is not planning to expand natural gas power plants, which are the perfect solar and wind farm backup power. Natural gas provides an essential base load when solar and wind can’t supply power to the grid. Batteries could help but they are very expensive. Batteries can't replace natural gas or nuclear power plants with their constant supply of fuel.
The president of the California Independent System Operator, the state electric grid manager, told the Los Angeles Times the problem is complex. A shortage of imports from other states, which are not guaranteed to be available, means California operates its electric grid “too close to the margin ... We’re often tight. And imports generally take care of the gap. In this case, because it was hot in West, we weren’t able to get the imports we would normally get. Renewables are not at the heart of the issues we had on Friday night. ... solar has virtually no value in the net peak hours, in the evening.”
The California electric grid is especially vulnerable to summer outages.
This summer authorities asked Californians to conserve energy to prevent blackouts. And they did. But not many people are charging EV batteries right now, because only 1.7 percent have EVs now. CA electricity demand could jump +25 percent if all passenger vehicles and pickup trucks on its roads were electric. That would be a large electricity demand increase, with each EV needing a full charge about once a week, depending on the driving range of the batteries in 2035 and beyond.
There is talk of upgrading the transmission lines and distribution equipment to handle the stronger demand from households, since most EVs are charged at home. There could be financial incentives for people to charge their cars during off-peak hours to avoid overloading the grid. The best time to do this seems to be the middle of the day, but many EVs will be parked at work in the middle of the day, not at home in a garage.
California’s grid vulnerability, plus EV ambitions, equals trouble ahead.
EVs are only 1.7 percent of the cars in California now. The CA grid needs to be prepared for a surge in EVs that need charging. Neighboring states will have more EVs too. There's no guaranty they will have spare eelectricity to sell to California public utilities. CA heat waves during the summer, with the large electricity demands needed for air conditioners, are not going away. They might even get worse.
California’s electric utilities and power producers, and power producers in other states from which California buys electricity, have had a big problem since 2008: Despite 8% population growth in the state and 32% “real” GDP growth (adjusted for inflation), electricity sales to end-users peaked in 2008 and then zigzagged down, eventually by 5% to 255,224 gigagwatthours in 2018, the lowest since 2005, according to the the EIA:
The drop in electricity demand was due to the switch from incandescent light bulbs to florescent lights and then to LED lights, more efficient lighting systems in cities and commercial areas, more efficient electrical equipment, such as air conditioners for businesses and households, etc. In addition, rooftop solar power production by households expanded over the years and ate into sales by utilities.
The business model of utilities was to borrow cheaply, invest in capacity additions, gradually increase sales and earnings to pay gradually increasing dividends, and then Wall Street loves you . But CA electricity demand peaked in 2009. The industry has a huge amount of extra capacity in the middle of the night when electricity demand is low. Of course night time power is not from solar power, and often not from wind power.
Idle capacity is very expensive, so the industry hopes that EVs will help reduce this idle capacity when people charge up their EVs in their garages at night. As of the last update from the EIA, California has 6,174 EV charging stations (with over 28,000 outlets) compared to 7,488 gas stations.
Charging stations are automated. There is no attendant, no cashier, no shop, no building. Just electrical equipment and parking. There are no fuel spills and no leaking underground tanks, and no soil contamination.
Charging stations near restaurants or some stores where drivers can spend 30 minutes are nice. Other drivers work or play video games in their cars. Charging stations are a lot cheaper to build than gasoline stations.
Meanwhile, almost one-third of California’s electricity was purchased from power producers in other states, a good part of it renewable (hydropower, wind, and solar). In 2018, power from coal plants was down to 4% of total electricity bought by California, and is expected to reach zero by 2026.
As surrounding states have more electric cars, they will have less spare electric power capacity to sell to California.
A little over two-thirds of the electricity sold in California was produced in California. Nearly half of it came from renewables (hydropower, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, etc.). Natural gas-fired power plants provided over 40%. Nuclear power was down to the two reactors at the Diablo Canyon power plant, to be retired in 2024. And coal-fired power generation is already zero fin the state. Knowing california, they will want to shut down their ntural gas power plants too. That could be a disaster. Solar and wind need 100% natural gas backup.
The continued decline in electricity demand in CA (chart below) was despite the rise in EV sales. Even if the sales ban on ICE vehicles in 2035 holds, there will still be a large number of ICE vehicles in the fleet by then.