How Can We Make Electric Cars Work In Hawaii?
Boston like Honolulu has a population of approximately 1 million people. Both cities are grappling with the means to develop their electric car markets so as to reduce the impact of fossil fuels in their transportation sectors by 2035. The people in both cities recognize that without substantially reducing the number of gasoline powered cars all of their other efforts to reduce climate change will not make any substantial difference in air quality.
Politicians in both cities set ambitious goals to transition from gasoline to electric power.
In 2014, then Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick pledged that the state would have 300,000 electric cars on the road by 2025. As of 2021 there were only 21,000 registered. The present Governor Charlie Baker pledged that by 2035 all new cars in Massachusetts should be powered by electricity.
In 2018 Hawaii Governor David Ige as part of the states ongoing Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI) pledged that all million fossil fuel cars on Hawaii roads be be powered by renewable energy sources by 2045.
The primary issue in both states and cities is how to pay for and provide enough charging stations to make that happen.
Since it takes at least 8 -12 hours to charge an electric car, using a conventional level 1 charger, 8 hours for a level 2 charger and at least 30 minutes for a level 3 charger there is a significant difference in where and how and for much it will cost to charge hundreds of thousands of electric cars. Level 1 and level 2 chargers cost $300- $500, while level 3 chargers cost $20,000 or more. The level 1 and level 2 chargers will easily be installed in solar powered home charging stations while level 3 need to be in areas where the cars can be parked easily
It is believed that initially the mass of electric cars will be limited primarily to home owners who have solar panels on their roofs and can charge their cars accordingly. This means essentially that every parking stall for a homeowner will have an electric charger built in.
It is assumed that 18,000 chargers will be needed for 300,000 cars. In Boston it was estimated that the cost to accommodate 500,000 cars with chargers and infrastructure upgrades to reach the target by 2035 would take $3 billion dollars In Hawaii, because everything costs nearly double to construct, the costs would more likely be $6 billion.
There is another point. As more people charge their cars, electric utilities will have to produce more power.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that nationally power plants will have to double their output to by 2050 meet the demand for electrified vehicles. In Hawaii this will mean an increase in rate costs even as the utility is encouraging people to leave the grid with solar panels and batteries.
So this is the problem; how to increase the capacity of the HECO grid within a short period of time, how to do that economically when the number of people on the grid willing to pay for it are decreasing and how to pay for all the electric chargers needed to make the system work.
In Boston and Honolulu, figuring out how to make electric cars work is going to be very complicated.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/12/business/despite-all-hype-electric-cars-are-no-easy-fix-climate-crisis-heres-why/