State transportation electrification plans fail to consider grid needs, new ESGI paper warns

Transportation electrification loads are rapidly growing and could account for 27% of global electricity demand by 2050. Despite that, a new white paper from the Energy Systems Integration Group warns state transportation plans required to access federal incentives for electric vehicle charging have not been considering the locational needs of the U.S. power grid…

The Federal Highway Administration announced last year it approved plans submitted by all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

But those plans “are not factoring in grid needs as part of their siting criteria,” ESIG said in its new report titled “Leveraging Locational and Temporal Flexibility in Transportation Electrification to Benefit Power Systems.”

As EV penetration increases and charging stations proliferate, experts say new demands will be placed on electric utilities, though states including California, Florida and Texas said in their plans that grid capacity was not a concern.