Strategies for handling the growth of EV impact on the electric grid

Grid modernization, battery-storage innovation, and AI integration all play pivotal roles in our fight for an electrified future

The rapid transition to electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs and PHEVs respectively) is a cause for celebration in humankind’s effort to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate the most disastrous consequences of anthropogenic climate change.

However, this phenomenon is also straining the current power infrastructure.
During a panel at Capgemini’s Business to Climate Connect 2024, part of Climate Week NYC, specialists in this space explored how improvements in battery storage, new applications for artificial intelligence (AI), and data-driven grid maintenance can facilitate further EV growth.

The state of play on EV adoption

There are reasons to be optimistic: EVs accounted for 18 percent of new car sales globally in 2023. In China, EVs or PHEVs account for more than half of all new car sales. In Norway, more than half of the vehicles on the road are EVs. These are extraordinary achievements.
But it’s a mixed picture. Volvo reined in its ambition to have a fully electric line-up of vehicles by 2030. Instead, the Swedish global automaker will aim for at least 90 percent of its global sales to consist of EVs and PHEVs.
James Forrest, EVP and Global Energy Transition and Utilities Industry Leader at Capgemini, said Capgemini’s annual World Energy Markets Observatory (WEMR) report shows that electrical grids could become the Achilles’ heel of the energy transition, without proper attention.
Investment in the grid is increasing but not quickly enough, Forrest said.

How Hydro One handles rising load demand with data analytics

Andrei Floarea, Senior Principal Director at Capgemini, said Canada’s EV adoption rates reached 13.4 percent in Q2 2023 and should rise to 16 percent by the end of 2024. Over the next five years, it’s expected to rise to 75 percent. 
This trend compelled Hydro One, the largest electricity transmission and distribution utility serving Ontario, Canada, to reconsider whether its transformers were prepared for the expected load impact.
Working with Capgemini, Hydro One implemented an advanced predictive-analytics solution that capitalizes on its rich datasets to assess the reliability of different transformers and prioritize upgrades in high-demand areas.
In addition to predictive maintenance, the resulting insights allow the utility to have more pointed conversations with the provincial government and regulators about which areas require special attention or support.

Mounting synergies: Different battery use cases encourage EV adoption

Kai-Philipp Kairies, CEO and Co-Founder of ACCURE Battery Intelligence, describes batteries as “the fastest growing energy technology in human history” with widespread utility beyond passenger vehicles.
If EV adoption declined, he argued, other spaces would soak up any excess batteries or talent.
Nitin Tyagi, Vice President of Supply Chain at Our Next Energy, agreed: “We all love cars, but there are a lot of other businesses that may not get as much visibility, which in the next couple of years will be very important to help us get through this transition.”
For example, one of the most important applications for next-generation batteries is grid-energy storage. Large-scale lithium-ion battery packs can store excess energy and provide backup power as demand ebbs and flows.
This helps islands like Australia and the United Kingdom – and metaphorical “islands” with similarly isolated power grids like Texas – manage volatile, renewable sources and stabilize the grid.
According to Kairies, as long as battery production continues, the product will become cheaper, which will in turn accelerate EV growth.
“Even if EVs now might slow down a bit, the overall technology will become so much better that EVs in the future will continue to get cheaper, more affordable, and more attractive.”

Powering data analysis with AI solutions

EV owners and mobility companies can tap into the power of AI to optimize power and reduce costs. These advantages are not limited to utilities.

AI-driven virtual power plants (VPPs), networks that aggregate various distributed energy resources (DERs), can charge EVs overnight for a fraction of the usual price. VPPs accomplish this by responding to price signals in real-time and deciding when to store, consume, or sell energy.
Forrest explained that he personally relies on a VPP, which manages 1.2 gigawatts of mainly nuclear and wind power, to charge his EV overnight in the United Kingdom.
Isabelle Ji, Senior Director of Solutions and Strategy at Einride, an electric and autonomous freight mobility company, said AI can transform how businesses plan schedules for electric trucks and other commercial vehicles.
Einride is developing an electric freight mobility platform that uses AI to analyze a variety of factors – such as delivery timelines, energy prices, grid loads, and terrain – to create “a day in the life” plan for each vehicle: travel routes, charging times, etc.
“We look at maximizing the value that we can create. In most cases, it’s ‘how do we maximize the number of shipments that we deliver or shipment miles?’ And we want to do that at the lowest cost,” Ji said.
Handling all the necessary data would be exponentially harder to handle manually and impossible beyond the scope of five trucks, according to Ji.

Confronting the current bottlenecks in battery production

Despite these advancements, several challenges to uninterrupted EV adoption remain.

Tyagi addressed the technical difficulties, specifically manufacturing engineering, of scaling perfectly designed batteries for the consumer market. He compared the process to getting a single Michelin-starred dish ready for common public consumption without losing quality along the way – no small feat.
Kairies discussed the geopolitical challenge of protecting developing domestic battery production from being smashed by foreign competition and not becoming energy dependent on other countries.
The construction of American gigafactories, large-scale facilities for producing EV batteries, soared after President Biden introduced a variety of incentives and tax cuts with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022. Nevertheless, US OEMs still need to compete with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL), which dominates the global market and is world-renowned for quality and price points.
All these issues are important for facilitating EV growth: protecting domestic supply chains, developing talent, optimizing energy usage, and promoting battery production.
But EVs ultimately derive their energy from the grid. If we want it to operate electric cars, we must power the grids.