EVs Will Be More Expensive To Power In New England- One Reason Is EVs Themselves

Power companies need to nearly double electrification hosting capacity to keep up with EV charging demands and other electrification trends. This means increases for customers who are already paying some of the highest electricity costs.

If regulators approve new power company proposals, rate-payers served by National Grid and Eversource will soon see a rate hike. Metro Boston customers served by Eversource presently pay over $0.30/kWh. This is about twice the national average cost for electricity and is rivaled only by costs in the San Fransisco Bay Area and Hawaii. The reasons for the proposed rate hikes seem logical. The existing grid infrastructure cannot handle increases in usage caused by two main trends; Growing electric vehicle adoption and the transition to heat-pump-based home heating systems. 

It may seem odd that EVs themselves are part of why it will soon cost more to charge an EV. In order to keep pace with the growing demand for electricity Eversource has proposed spending $5.5 billion for new clean energy substations and conducting upgrades on existing substations.

An additional benefit of the improvements and additions planned by Eversource and National Grid is the grid may also be able to better withstand the impacts of major storms and flooding.

The proposal was created to comply with a new climate law passed in Massachusetts, which mandates that each Electric Distribution Company prepare an Electric Sector Modernization Plan (ESMP). The plan must be transparent, proactively upgrade the distribution system, modernize the grid and integrate additional clean energy. Jump to the Eversource plan summary here. 

“In order to meet decarbonization goals and help customers fully realize the benefits of the unprecedented clean energy transition we’ve embarked upon together in Massachusetts, we must modernize our electric distribution system to increase capacity in support of the push to electrification, enhance reliability, and make the grid more resilient to the impacts of climate change,” said Eversource vice president for system planning Digaunto Chatterjee. “Our Electric Sector Modernization Plan offers the most comprehensively detailed and ambitious roadmap yet to make that vision a reality, and importantly incorporates feedback from a wide variety of stakeholders while bolstering community engagement efforts for all proposed clean energy infrastructure projects moving forward.” 

If completed, Eversource says that its plan will enable a 180% increase in electrification hosting capacity, which it says will provide additional capacity to enable 2.5 million electric vehicles statewide. The upgrades will also enable the powering 1 million residential heat pumps within the company’s territory. Solar also gets a boost with an incremental 2.2 GW of additional solar hosting capacity. At the end of the proposed grid expansion, Eversource expects its total distributed energy resource (DER) systemwide hosting capacity to be about 5.8 GW.

National Grid’s plan is to expand the capacity of the electric distribution grid by 1 GW by 2030 to support building and vehicle electrification, which it says will see a doubling of electricity demand by 2050.

Source Note: For more details on this topic, Torque News suggests checking out Power Grid International’s overview of the grid expansion and improvements. 

John Goreham is an experienced New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can follow John on Twitter, and connect with him at Linkedin.

. Image of Emporia EV charger by John Goreham.