The increase of electric vehicles on US highways in the next few years has plenty of challenges and opportunities for ordinary consumers and energy producers alike. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimated that a national charging network needs to be capable of supporting 30-42 million plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) by 2030. A lower estimate for that year of 26 million electric vehicles was forecast by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). Whatever the exact number, the USA will need hundreds of thousands of DC fast-charging (DCFC) points to service these vehicles in the next decade or so.
There are plenty of potential sites: basically, anywhere where there is vehicle parking, including parking lots, shopping malls, grocery stores, office or residential parking, and on-street parking.
However the increase in EVs likely to cause problems for the transmission network, unless there is a large investment in infrastructure and grid upgrade.
The challenge is clear: A significant volume of reliable, convenient, low-cost EV charging needs to be installed nationwide. One of the potential benefits is that by using a lot of DERs with input from renewables, particularly solar, and storage, this can be a revenue stream for many businesses. For example, in the sunnier parts of the USA, putting solar panels over a parking lot, then charging EV drivers to use the chargepoints, would make economic sense. Each use case needs careful analysis, taking into account the number of vehicles serviced, time of day and weather data, as well as whether this would be more profitable than simply selling the electricity to the grid.
Despite the challenges, it looks likely that DERs supplying EV charging systems will be part of the energy transition landscape in the 2030s and beyond.