Utilities gird for surge in electric autos
Growth in demand is coming sooner than oil industry expects
Major utilities expect the adoption of electric vehicles to accelerate and are preparing for a world where car-charging stations could have a sizable effect on their power demand.
The future of electric vehicles and their impact was a consistent theme at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit energy conference as executives and analysts grappled with questions of how quickly the electric car market would grow and how that would affect oil, natural gas and power consumption.
Oil executives downplayed the threat to their industry, arguing that adoption of electric cars won’t happen as fast as some analysts have predicted. Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, noted that building charging stations and other infrastructure needed to make the transition to electric vehicles won’t happen easily or quickly.
Helen Currie, chief economist at Houston oil producer ConocoPhillips, said her company had modeled electric car demand and other factors, and didn’t see oil demand peaking “anytime within the next 20 to 30 years.”
But automotive, battery and utility executives came to Houston with a different view, arguing that change will come faster than oil companies think.
“By 2030, one should expect disruption, full-blown disruption,” said James Calaway, CEO of Calaway Interests, a company that produces lithium batteries and sells them predominantly to the auto industry.
On Wednesday, General Mo-
tors CEO Mary Barra offered a similar outlook, saying that that the world already is in the “midst of a transportation revolution” and that her company is expanding its fleet of electric vehicles for sale.
In California, more than 300,000 electric cars are on the road and utilities expect millions more to join them — and plug into the electric grid — by 2030. The California utility Edison International is trying to develop a car-charging system to handle more electric vehicles without straining the delivery of electricity to businesses and residences.
Part of the challenge will be managing power consumption so that electric cars charge when electricity is plentiful, which in California is the middle of the day, said Pedro Pizarro, Edison’s CEO.
“The bigger question and challenge is what is the impact when those vehicles charge and where they charge,” he said.
Texas, with just 19,000 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, is far behind California. But as electric vehicle technology improves and more people buy them in California, China and other places, Texans are likely to follow, said Scott Prochazka, the CEO of Houston CenterPoint Energy, the utility that serves Houston.
“What will happen, as states like California begin to use new technology, these technologies will find an economic story in Texas and they will begin to be adopted,” he said. “The role of the electric grid here in Texas is really to be an enabler for customers to make decisions that they want to pursue.”
Don Clevenger, the senior vice president of strategic planning for Oncor, the state’s largest utility, sees Texas as the ideal landscape for electric vehicles — a state known for its car culture and lack of mass transit, but also one that is accustomed to dealing with massive power demand during a scorching summer.
Texas’ transition to a future with more power demand for electric vehicles would be seamless, Clevenger said.
“Our grid is built for the hot summer day in August with all the air-conditioning,” he said.
Clevenger also plans to join a growing list of executives at CERAWeek who drive electric cars — a list that includes Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of the French oil giant Total, and Patricia Vincent-Collawn, CEO of PNM Resources, which owns and operates utilities in Texas and New Mexico.
“I did order my first electric vehicle last month. It’s a Tesla; it comes in another month,” Clevenger said on Thursday. “In a couple of months I’ll never get gas again.”