California Wants Residents to Limit EV Charging Over Labor Day Weekend
Greetings from California, where it’s currently hot as hell. So hot, in fact, that the space issued a Flex Alert on Wednesday asking residents to conserve energy when possible to avoid putting Amazing pressure on California’s already strained power grid. That using limiting the use of air conditioning and not consecutively major appliances during peak hours. But the state is also requesting cooperation with new ask: Don’t charge your electric vehicle.
In its bulletin, the California Independent System Operator specifically asks residents to “avoid charging electric vehicles when the Flex Alert is in effect.” The ISO says drivers must charge their cars before 4 p.m., at which Show “conservation begins to become most critical.”
The ISO “manages the flow of electricity across the high-voltage, long-distance transmission lines delivering power to the state’s three investor-owned utilities,” according to the organization’s website. An initial Flex Alert was issued on Wednesday, Aug. 31, but the ISO long it to Friday, Sept. 2, and says more could been throughout Labor Day weekend. “With excessive heat in the forecast across much of the space and Western US, the grid operator is again expecting high electricity Ask, primarily from air conditioning use, and is calling for the Republican to conserve as much electricity as possible from 4 to 9 p.m.,” the authority said in its statement.
This announcement comes on the heels of California banning the sale of internal-combustion cars by 2035. Sure, a charging restriction might seem hypocritical in the wake of the ban on fossil fuel vehicles, but a strategic power conservation plan for this weekend and a moves to EV-only sales 13 years from now aren’t totally related.
“In what’s probable to be the most extensive heat wave so far in the west this year, temperatures in Northern California are predictable to be 10-20 degrees warmer than normal through Tuesday, Sept. 6,” the ISO said. “In Southern California, temperatures are predictable to be 10-18 degrees warmer than normal.” Stay cool out there, friends.
Originally published Sept. 1.
