Just one week after the California State Government voted on a plan to ban the sale of petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles, they have now told the citizens of the fruit and nut state to stop charging electric vehicles to prevent over-straining the state’s power grid.
The newly ratified policy approved by the California Air Resources Board (aka CARB) mandates all new cars sold in California to be free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 as their part in fighting climate change. However, like much of the world, California is in the grip of an ongoing heatwave and the operator of the state’s energy grid has warned that this will overly stress it and conservation will be needed over the holiday weekend to avoid blackouts, which happened last year.
The alert is for the time between 4pm to 9pm when there is the greatest use and when there is less solar energy available. In a press release, the grid operator told consumers to set thermostats at or above 25 Celsius, reduce the use of air-cons, turn off unnecessary lights, avoid using large appliances and stop charging electric vehicles. The hope is that this will ease the strain on the system and stop the need for more drastic measures, such as rolling power outages. One of the problems is most EV owners come home from work and charge their cars during that period.
The call to stop charging EVs sends a bit of a mixed message with the ban on gas-powered cars being announced. The ban is just temporary but the State Governor, Gavin Newsom, still believes that they can reach a total of 68% of all new cars being EVs by 2030 and 100% by 2035. It is a noble attempt to save 900 million barrels of oil per year and is backed by a state-wide investment of USD10 billion a year but hopefully most of the money goes into improving the electric infrastructure in California.
