With what appears to be a perfect storm building on the horizon for electric vehicles, some utilities are way ahead of others when it comes to readying the grid–and their customers–for a large-scale deployment of the paradigm-changing electric car.

It’s the 240-volt elephant in the room (or 120-volt if customers are plugging-in via a standard 20-amp wall plug). What would happen if everyone ran out tomorrow and bought an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle? Wouldn’t we just be shifting our carbon emissions to coal-fired power plants and threatening the stability of an already taxed North American grid? The short answer is no. There aren’t enough electric vehicles in production today to have any measurable impact on electricity demand.

And if you ask the engineers at Southern California Edison’s Electric Vehicle Technical Center, the long answer is also no.

Of course, the impact of EV-charging depends on regional variations in energy supply, the time of day vehicles are charged and what kinds of chargers are used. But industry insiders argue that even if there were all the EVs and plug-in EVs the market demanded, the net impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions would still be a positive one.

A recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council concluded that by 2050 the widespread adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could reduce annual vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases by more than 450 million metric tons.

If EVs take off as many industry analysts predict, utilities will have to come to terms with providing electricity to thousands of new cars and trucks every day. And some utilities have already been thinking about this for a long time.

During early market development, when the number of plug-in electric vehicles is still relatively small, large utilities like SCE expect little impact on overall utility rates and grid performance. But avoiding spikes in electricity demand as a result of charging patterns is an important policy objective for SCE, particularly in what Edison International chairman and CEO Ted Craver admitted was “an extremely peaky system.” Southern California Edison normally runs at about 45-50% of its capacity.

But on a recent tour of Southern California’s Electric Vehicle Tech Center, Craver and director of Electric Transportation Ed Kjaer emphasized that while they provide electricity to 15 million people across SCE’s sprawling service area, there is plenty of capacity for EVs if they are incorporated into a smarter, more efficient system. “Grids need to evolve from unidirectional to multidirectional,” said Kjaer.

Advanced batteries and smart technology Facing a likely onslaught of electric cars in Southern California, Edison is focused on how they can use the electricity they currently have on the grid to power the necessary infrastructure of electric car-charging networks. In short, the system is in need of more storage and more communication via smart meters, appliances, houses and grids.

SCE’s Electric Vehicle Technical Center is currently testing automotive-grade Lithium-Ion batteries for use in stationary applications in the electric grid. The company plans to begin field testing the batteries soon for several different applications such as small home storage devices and large central plant uses at SCE substations connected to wind farms.

The batteries under study–as well as those that would be studied should SCE be awarded federal grant money it has applied for–can be used to stabilize demand and smooth the spikes created by distributed generation. SCE envisions the day when people come home, plug their car into their house and–depending on the time of day and the home’s energy load–the car’s batteries either begin to provide energy for the house or the house’s batteries begin to charge up the car.

The pace of technology and the growing utility gap But SCE is way ahead of the curve as compared to other utilities. This is partly true because Southern California is viewed by some as being the epicenter of the EV future, but also because SCE is an investor-owned utility in a state that has been pushed by the state regulating authority to clean up its sources and become more efficient at generating and transmitting electricity.

“The gap is widening between investor-owned utilities and co-ops and munis,” said Edison International chairman and CEO Ted Craver of the growing disparity between utilities and their preparedness for EVs.

But the gap does not come without a cost, admits Craver. A cost both on customers who cannot access the kind of technological breakthroughs as Southern California Edison is making in the EV Tech Center, and a cost on those customers who are paying for those breakthroughs.

“Investor-owned utilites are having to pay the new costs of new technology and developments,” said Craver.

One wonders, however, if electric co-ops and municipal electric companies will be left in the dark when it comes to developing an EV infrastructure. One need only look to the regulating agencies in most states that have adopted renewable energy portfolios to see that a precedent has already been set for letting co-ops and municipal power providers slide if the changes are going to have a particularly negative impact on ratepayers. The aggregate problem with all of that turning the other way is that it becomes institutionalized. And when other changes are proposed to the system down the road, like making the necessary changes to allow for more EVs on the grid, many utilities will again be given a pass.

Regardless of who foots the bill (or because of who), certain parts of the country will be ahead of others when it comes to preparing its grid–and its customers–for the realities of large-scale electric vehicle uptake. The utilities that arm their customers and themselves with the most knowledge in the coming years will also likely steer the EV industry to develop a regional market in the utility’s wake.

EV-deployment will only move as fast as the infrastructure will allow. After all, what good are 10,000 electric cars if they crash the local grid every night?

Edison International provided travel and lodging for my visit the EV Test Center.

Reprinted with permission from Earth and Industry.