Biden wants electric cars to make up half of new cars sold in the country by 2030.
They could install smart thermostats and appliances to use electricity when it costs less, like at night, said Sam Calisch, head of research at Rewiring America.Įmily Fisher, a senior vice president for clean energy at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility industry trade group, gave another example. That’s because people could generate some electricity through rooftop solar panels and store that energy in home batteries. That does not include spending on long-distance transmission lines and power generating equipment like solar and wind farms.īut the money San Jose residents and businesses spend on electricity would not necessarily triple or even double, the group contends. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to upgrade the distribution networks across the country to meet the country’s clean energy goals, said Ben Hertz-Shargel, global head of Grid Edge, a division of Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting firm. The big challenge for policymakers and the utility industry is figuring out how quickly to invest in the grid while keeping the energy affordable. “We know that our grid is going to look different in a few years,” Mr. The company added that it supports the use of solar panels by nearly 600,000 of its residential customers and electric cars owned by 360,000 customers. Since the failure in San Jose last year, the company has replaced 400 transformers in and around that city, of a total of 62,000 in Santa Clara County. Mark Esguerra, senior director of electric asset strategy at PG&E, said the company planned to upgrade a lot more of its equipment.
Now, homes and businesses are increasingly supplying energy to the grid from their rooftop solar panels. It was designed for a world in which electricity flowed in one direction - from the grid to people. Much of the equipment on the electric grid was built decades ago and needs to be upgraded. But his ambitious goals could be upended by aging transformers and dated electrical lines that have made it hard for homeowners, local governments and businesses to use solar panels, batteries, electric cars, heat pumps and other devices that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President Biden is pushing lawmakers and regulators to wean the United States from fossil fuels and counter the effects of climate change.
“We wasted 30,000-something dollars on a system we can’t use,” Theresa Garcia said. The problem: The local utility’s equipment is so overloaded that there is no place for the electricity produced by the panels to go. Seven months after workers finished installing solar panels atop the Garcia family home near Stanford University, the system is little more than a roof ornament.
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