California must spend up to $20 billion on grid upgrades if it wants EVs
(JUST THE NEWS) – California must spend up to $20 billion on transmission line upgrades to support energy transfers to electric vehicles, according to a new Berkeley study. This figure does not include grid stress from further electrification efforts away from gas appliances, and could prove to be significantly higher.
The study’s author estimates that by 2035, 50% of “feeder” transmission lines will be “overloaded by EV charging demand,” a figure that will grow to 67% by 2045. They say the cost of upgrading transmission lines for EVs could cost $6 to $20 billion, or about 10% to 40% of the current transmission system. While the authors say “additional infrastructure cost drives the electricity price up,” they hypothesize “the growth of total electricity consumption drives the rate down, which leads to a net impact of rate reduction according to our estimation.”
While scale tends to confer cost advantages in the production of nearly any good or service, energy bills for consumers in California continue to rise as wildfire mitigation, transmission and distribution investments, and green energy subsidies drive substantial energy price increases. California energy is now the most expensive of any state other than Hawaii, which sits in the middle of the ocean and must import much of its energy.
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