The next challenge for the US charging grid: congestion

In Fernley, Nevada, east of Reno, there are 16 cables that quickly charge electric vehicles — not bad for a town of just 24,000.

This weekend, the report will be changed. About 30,000 vehicles are expected to drive through the city on their way to the Black Rock Desert, 182 kilometers to the north, best known as the site of the annual Burning Man art and music festival. If even 1% of those cars are EVs whose drivers are trying to charge at the same time in Fernley, the stations will have significant wait times.

Fortunately for Burners – if not for the planet – the risk of charger congestion is low. The Burning Man Project, the nonprofit organization that oversees the event’s ticketing and much of its construction, says less than 1 percent of attendees get there by battery-powered car. But as EV adoption grows in the U.S., events like Burning Man pose the next big challenge for the U.S. charging network: having enough chargers to handle localized travel bursts like Thanksgiving week in New England or July in Yellowstone National Park.

“Once you hit 40 percent usage, certainly anyone coming to you is going to have a hard time finding a charger,” says Rick Wilmer, chief executive of ChargePoint Holdings Inc., which operates about 3,000 fast-charging stations around the world. world. US.

The roads that bring people to Burning Man—literally, not spiritually—are emblematic of the first big challenge to public taxation in the US: the deficit. Nearly two-thirds of Nevada’s stations have been online in the past three years. Fernley was an early adopter; its Tesla station opened in 2015, followed by an Electrify America cable bank in 2019. Thanks to this infrastructure, it’s now possible for an intrepid EV driver to “do a burnout” without gas.

“You have enough range to get in and out,” says Jamie Schiel, an occasional Burner and Stable Auto’s chief technology officer, who helps networks decide where to put new stations.

Like Nevada, the US charging grid is also entering its post-for era. There are now about 4 million electric vehicles on the road and about 9,000 public fast-charging sites, a figure that rose 9% in the second quarter. The proliferation of the plug means that America’s most iconic road trips—including Route 50—are now possible by electric car, though it’s still wise to research routes in advance.

To see the next charging challenge—redundancy—look at China. EVs now account for one in three new car sales there. During February’s Lunar New Year, a major travel holiday, Chinese electric vehicle drivers experienced long wait times at highway charging stations.

The US is beginning to see glimpses of that future. While the longest charging lines occur over Presidents’ Day weekend—probably because people underestimate this travel holiday—April’s solar eclipse created several charging hotspots along the path of totality. Some EV drivers found themselves waiting in massive lines to enjoy themselves.

In terms of potential congestion, the US charger-to-EV ratio is one of the worst in the world. (The Netherlands, for example, has one public charger for every five battery-powered cars.) However, the system works largely because American EV owners tend to charge at home and because most don’t drive at the same time . This year through April, public chargers in the US were more than half full, just 4 percent of the time, according to Stable Auto.

These dynamics are changing as electric vehicle sales increase. The newer cohort of buyers tend to drive more than those who made the switch earlier and are less likely to have a home charging option. Already, fast charging stations are full about 20% of the time. EVgo Inc., which operates about 1,000 of them in the U.S., says the busiest 15 percent of stations are full nearly half the time.

To meet demand, ChargePoint and EVgo are building more stations. At the end of June, EVgo had 730 outlets under construction, according to CEO Badar Khan; 16% of its sites now have six or more stalls. Meanwhile, Electrify America is trying a “congestion relief” plan that stops charging when the car is 85 percent full.

However, periodic surges in travel are nearly impossible to plan for a charging network, at least profitably. One strategy: The industry is slowly moving toward dynamic pricing—lower rates during slow periods and higher rates when demand is high. That kind of pricing would come back during big events like Burning Man or an eclipse, helping to cover the downtime that eats into the bottom line.

At first glance, Burning Man seems like the perfect candidate for levels of electric vehicle adoption so enthusiastic that they outpace public outlets. But in reality, the “Leaving No Trace” event has a 100,000-ton carbon footprint that mostly comes from travel for attendees, according to estimates by nonprofit startup incubator Black Rock Labs.

In 2019, the Burning Man Project released a sustainability roadmap that includes buying offsets, planting trees, adding solar panels, and using renewable diesel generators and batteries to build and maintain its traveling city. Last year, the festival generated 7 MWh of solar power—enough to power the average US home for eight months—which nearly half of the attendees used at some point.

In the future, electric vehicles could become a bigger part of Burning Man’s carbon calculation. “As local EV charging infrastructure improves and as battery management software and grid balancing technology matures, we are confident that EVs will play an increasingly important role in eliminating (Black Rock City) of fossil fuels,” a spokesman said.

For now, though, Black Rock Desert is a bit of an EV desert, too. Tony Pham, a Burner who has only missed two years since 2008, says he rarely sees EVs there. Even conventional cars often can’t handle the occasional heat and mud.

“There are so many things that have a decent chance of going wrong,” says Pham. Among those risks is simply returning to Fernley. “If you don’t leave before the man burns, you’re bound to be stuck in traffic,” he explains. “There are years it could take you eight hours.”

Top photo: A Volkswagen ID.4 electric vehicle (EV) at a Rivian charging station in San Francisco, California, USA, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Volkswagen AG takes another step in its long battle to catch up with Tesla Inc. ., investing $5 billion in a tie-up with the American company’s closest rival, Rivian Automotive Inc. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)

Related: California Needs a Million Electric Vehicle Charging Stations — But That’s ‘Unlikely’ and ‘Unrealistic’

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