Last ride stops: Decarbonization! Are we ready?

A whitepaper prepared jointly by National Grid and Hitachi Energy

It’s a fact. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. These emissions primarily come from burning fossil fuels for cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes¹. Inevitably, to reduce emissions and reach net zero goals, we must electrify surface transportation.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen a seismic boom of electric vehicles – predominantly user-owned passenger vehicles – with the help of local state and federal financial subsidies.

But why stop there?

Medium and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDVs) such as trucks, buses and delivery vans emit up to 30 x the amount of carbon dioxide as a typical passenger vehicle. It’s time to switch gears and focus on the heavy hitters – after all, more tons requires more power.

Is today’s grid still fit-for-purpose?
For over 100 years, our electric grid has delivered safe and reliable power to customers and has accommodated economic growth and the introduction of new, advanced technologies.

But today’s demands are unprecedented…

With renewables integration, the rise of prosumers, and increased complexity, large-scale fleet electrification will exert exponential pressure on national grids – and could demand a lot of power, all at once, across multiple, specific locations.

Partnering for an outlook on the future
As with any forecasting tool, we usually draw on the past to predict the future. However, fleet electrification presents a challenge because there is no historical load growth on which to base future estimates. There is therefore no way for a utility to proactively plan for fleet electrification using their existing methodology.

To understand what will be needed from utilities and the grid to support the electrification of MHDVs, Hitachi Energy and National Grid U.S. partnered on a study of the potential demands and grid impacts of electric fleets by analyzing one power line, a feeder in the National Grid’s U.S. electric service territory that is expected to eventually charge over 400 new electric trucks at 10 depots (See Figure ES-1 below). When only 10% of those trucks electrify, peak demand is expected to almost double.

In order to ensure that future electricity demands can be met, we sought to understand how differences in fleet locations, usage patterns, fleet sizes, vehicle types, and/or charging patterns would impact distribution or transmission networks. 

Looking to the future
The findings in this whitepaper illustrate that advanced planning for fleet electrification is critical as exemplified through our case study power line feeder in the U.S. There are many options to consider like electric network reconfiguration, making multi-value grid upgrades, and energy storage.

However, delivering this new capacity has its risks…

If you are a utility, policymaker, fleet operator or relevant stakeholder, this study outlines individual – as well as collective – recommendations to maintain a reliable network while satisfying the incoming needs of electric fleets. Download the whitepaper today or request to speak to a member of our team here.