Teslas and other electric cars won’t dent the grid, never mind break it

Renewables are increasing capacity faster than electric cars are increasing demand

Running our automobiles on electricity instead of gasoline shifts energy requirements from gas pumps to the grid. What’s going to happen when significant numbers of cars are plugged in at night?

Given the increase in expected delivery of Teslas to 500,000 in 2019 and the announcements by multiple car manufacturers that they would have several fully electric cars in their lineups in the next handful of years, let’s look at a 2021 view as well as a 2040 view.

What’s the net? Electric cars aren’t going to break or even dent the grid. By 2021, global electrical consumption might increase by 0.16% to 1.5%. By 2040, things start to get interesting with 5% to 45% increases in global electrical consumption, but that increased demand is still a lot less than what we are putting in with renewables annually. There is no grid in the world today which will begin to struggle with likely penetration of electric cars by 2021.

In order to play out the scenarios, we need to know how many electric cars will be on the road, how far they will be driven, and how much electricity they will consume.