With electricity grids increasingly at risk in the more frequent, severe storms and heatwaves brought on by climate change, and Hawaiian Electric the latest utility accused of being too slow to shut down power lines ahead of a devastating wildfire, electric vehicles and microgrids are emerging as go-to options to deliver the energy households need in an emergency.
Last month, the New York Times profiled John and Rachelle Reigard, a Nashville-area couple whose F-150 Lightning pickup truck kept their lights on when strong winds toppled trees and power lines and left thousands without power. “You can look at all the houses around us, and they’re all off,” John Reigard said. “A lot of people ask the question: ‘How do you have power?’”
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Power grids “are increasingly straining and buckling during extreme weather linked to climate change, including in lengthy heatwaves, intense storms, and devastating floods,” the Times writes. “Many people have bought generators or home solar and battery systems, often at great expense.”
But the Reigards “are part of a small group of pioneers using the batteries in their electric vehicles as a source of backup power for their homes,” the news story states. “Energy and auto experts expect many more people to do the same in the coming years as auto and energy companies make it easier for people and businesses to tap the energy in electric cars for more than driving.”
Earlier this month, GM announced it will add a backup power function to all its electric vehicle models.
Bidirectional EV charging—a fast-emerging technology for which Montreal-based dcbel has just raised C$50 million in investment—is also on the radar of Edison International, a U.S. utility holding company that serves millions of households and businesses in Southern California. By storing surplus power at times of day when solar and wind are abundant and demand is relatively low, then releasing it to the grid when demand is peaking, EVs can act like “a bigger rubber band to absorb the shocks and manage them day to day and week to week,” CEO Pedro Pizarro told the Times.
Both the need and the opportunity to make grids more resilient to climate chaos have been front and centre in U.S. jurisdictions like California, Texas, and now Hawai’i, where grids have repeatedly crashed in extreme weather and power lines have been known or believed to have sparked massive wildfires. That list now includes the calamitous wildfire that incinerated Lāhainā, Hawai’i last week, killed at least 114 people, and left hundreds more missing as of August 18.
Rupp Carriveau, director of the University of Windsor’s Environmental Energy Institute, said Canada faces the same risks and opportunities.
Just as the rush to decarbonize drives up electricity demand, the first generation of utility-scale wind and solar systems is reaching the end of its service life, while climate change exposes grids “to unprecedented weather events not foreseen in the original infrastructure design models,” he wrote last month for the Globe and Mail. “So how do we design a system that is cost-optimized for sophisticated everyday operation but is also hardened against extreme climate events? We design for resiliency.”
Carriveau said home EV charging and neighbourhood, commercial, and industrial microgrids can “provide important ancillary services back to the central grid—helping prop up slumping power supply during high demand to avoid service interruptions.” While that potential hinges on better coordination between central and local grids, “this ability to better distribute power to places and times when it’s needed can increase central grid flexibility and reliability.”
A suburb of Ottawa got a snapshot of what that future grid could look like when a May, 2022 derecho windstorm cut off power to 180,946 households and businesses. “A staggering 54% of our customers were without power at some point during this major event,” local utility Hydro Ottawa later wrote, in a recap of the year’s top five outages.
When the storm shut down local power supplies, wells, and septic systems in suburban/rural Manotick, retired government scientist Art Hunter stepped up to help his neighbours with a home microgrid that uses solar panels to generate electricity and a ground-source heat pump for heating and cooling. The system revolves around three Tesla Powerwall batteries in Hunter’s home.
“Hunter said about three houses in the area are running extension cords to his house right now, while some neighbours are dropping by with household electronics to charge,” the Ottawa Citizen reported three days after the storm, while recovery efforts were still under way. “He said neighbours using extension cords can swap out their fridges and freezers for other appliances provided they don’t exceed 16 amps.”
“I’m half expecting a SWAT team to swoop in,” Hunter joked, after stringing several extension cords across the road to his property. He said his place had become a “community gathering spot” since he began offering power supplies and water refills.
