San Diego utility charges ahead with electric-car plan

[Ed Barrow]

With the first mass-market electric cars set to hit California roads later this year, the state's utilities have been working to ensure that early adopters -- who tend to be clustered in places like Berkeley and Santa Monica -- don't overload neighborhood transformers and trigger local blackouts. One way to do that is to encourage drivers not to plug in all at the same time -- say, when they arrive home from work and also crank up the air conditioning -- by setting variable electricity rates that reward those who postpone charging until demand falls late at night or in the wee hours of the morning. What is unknown is whether such rates will actually change anyone's behavior.

We're about to find out. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a pilot project proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric to set variable rates for electric car charging.

"This information is critically important as we contemplate a future with widespread electric vehicle usage, given the additional electricity demand these vehicles create and the associated impacts on the grid," Michael Peevey, the utilities commission president, said in a statement.

The project, which kicks off in January, will accompany the roll out of 1,000 Nissan Leaf electric cars in the San Diego area and the installation of home charging stations for each driver. Some 1,500 public charging stations will also be installed as well as 50 fast chargers that allow the cars' batteries to be topped off in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

The San Diego effort is part of a program backed by the United States Department of Energy called the EV Project that will put 5,700 Leafs and 2,600 Chevrolet Volts in garages in five states along with 14,650 charging stations and 310 fast chargers.


http://www.grist.org/article/san-diego-merges-on-to-the-electric-highway/