The Brief

We take for granted the endless flow of electrons that enable modern life just as we take for granted the air we breathe. Yet, an outage can occur at almost any time, usually when too much demand is placed on some portion of the circuit distributing energy around a neighborhood. As misfortune would have it, the rush to electrify the cars we’ve come to depend upon is increasing the risk of overloads and outages in the years ahead if utilities can’t keep up.

Nowhere is the need for bolstering the grid as pronounced as it is in California. A new study reveals that, as the state chases its audacious goal of ensuring that every new vehicle sold from 2035 on plugs into an outlet, Golden State energy providers will need to perform extensive upgrades to the circuits that shuttle energy around cities. By 2045, California’s three major utilities will need to expand their combined distribution capacity by 25 gigawatts. The researchers found that these upgrades could cost $6 billion to $20 billion for the transformers and other hardware alone. Despite the expense, it will likely benefit, not burden, everyone who uses electricity.

“According to our study, actually, there will be a decrease in electricity price,” said Yanning Li, a doctoral student with a focus on energy systems at the University of California, Davis and the study’s lead author.

Li and her co-author found that the increase in energy consumption — and the revenue that would generate — will exceed the cost of the upgrades and ultimately reduce rates by up to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. Energy in California currently costs, on average, just over 31 cents per kilowatt-hour. Yet, in a report with findings aligned with Li’s study, the California Public Utilities Commission pointed out that, depending on how much utilities spend on things like renewables and transmission capacity, the price customers pay could stay the same or even inch upward. Li also acknowledged that many factors may complicate how energy prices change for customers, including energy efficiency programs and rooftop solar.

A shortage of new transformers that plagued the industry even before the pandemic shuddered the entire supply chain complicates the price picture further. As a result of these challenges, “you can see utility lead times go up from an order of months to a year or two plus, and prices going up by a factor of five or greater,” said Killian McKenna, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who specializes in the distribution grid. If transformer costs continue rising as EV adoption pushes more utilities to consider upgrading their grids, then the overall outlay will grow as well — something Li notes in her study.

The companies that make these transformers — which must be tailor-made for the unique needs of a specific application — confront a challenging task in tempering the cost curve. The industry has pushed Congress to invest in the domestic transformer manufacturing and ensure that new federal rules help the industry to overcome supply chain obstacles.

In the face of long waits and high prices, options exist that can ease the pace and extent of upgrades required to manage increasing loads, said Kristin Eberhard, the senior policy director at Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on electrification.

One option is to provide customers with incentives to shift the time or location of charging in a way that reduces peak demand — something Li discusses in her study. This can mean a driver choosing to charge at work instead of at home, or it can mean that, if a utility increases or decreases its energy prices depending on real-time supply and demand data, EV owners can program their car to charge when the rate drops below a prescribed level.

Utilities also can leverage big data. About a decade ago, in preparation for the surge in electric vehicles, Burbank Water and Power, a Los Angeles-area utility, developed a smart grid that allowed it to monitor its equipment with a high level of precision and accuracy, detect potential outages before they occur, and identify other sources of inefficiency and vulnerability. Noticing that some transformers saw significantly less demand than they were designed for while others were chronically taxed to their limits, the utility systematically shuffled components to right-size its distribution system, making it one of the most reliable in the nation. While not a permanent solution, such a project can certainly buy time for the supply chain to catch up with demand.

Of course, while a rapid growth in EV adoption across California and the 14 states that have adopted its EV mandate creates a new and growing source of energy demand, these plug-in vehicles are by no means the only reason distribution networks must be upgraded, which is why the California Public Utilities Commission expects the current plans for distribution maintenance to be able to keep up with the growth in demand from EV charging. Utilities need to perform line maintenance because America’s energy infrastructure has aged. And in some places, power lines need to be buried to make them more resilient and to reduce wildfire risk. But these concurrent dilemmas present an opportunity.

“You can imagine if you have old infrastructure that needs to be put underground and needs to be modernized at the same time that you expand the network, there’s a lot of opportunities for cost savings there,” McKenna said. “And that’s the big opportunity piece that I think folks need to look at.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/california-ev-wave-highlights-challenges-for-utilities/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The Los Angeles region’s troubled homeless services agency announced this month that it will no longer manage the region’s federal homelessness dollars, amid scrutiny from the Trump administration.

Now, a federal court must help determine who will manage roughly $240 million in annual federal funding after the L.A. Homeless Services Authority gives up that long-held job in the coming months.

At a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said most of his attention is on who will administer the round of federal money that will be awarded in December and distributed next year.

The only potential near-term successor discussed in court was L.A. County, which created a new homelessness department and applied for the role. County officials have promised much stronger accountability and transparency.

But the city of L.A., where most of the region’s unhoused people live, is also interested in taking over some of LAHSA’s duties. The city could eventually try to break off and form its own regional body to receive federal funds, Carter said.

“But that’s for the future,” Carter said. “For now, we have to focus on providing for people experiencing homelessness — and also fraud and corruption.”

‘The watchdog wasn’t watching’

LAHSA has been used as a punching bag, Carter said, but he blamed recent cases of alleged theft of taxpayer funds on a broader “failure of government” by both HUD and LAHSA.

“The watchdog wasn’t watching, and the money got distributed without accountability,” Carter said.

In the meantime, Carter said, LAHSA isn’t going anywhere. He said any transition must unfold gradually to avoid displacing people from housing and services.

“We’re going to have to live with LAHSA for at least some period of time,” Carter said. “The question might be how much?”

How soon could the county take over? 

Carter said he agreed with LAHSA’s decision to entrust another administrator to manage the money.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) told Carter the next round of annual funding would be distributed over 2027.

Carter acknowledged HUD may be uneasy sending that money to LAHSA, the very agency it is investigating for fraud. Carter said he was struggling with the issue himself.

Carter signaled that he wants to see federal funding transferred to the county by January if it is chosen as LAHSA’s successor.

‘The devil is in the details’

At the hearing, federal prosecutor Bill Essayli said the Trump administration would rather reach an agreement than litigate. He said “the devil is in the details” when it comes to any transition away from LAHSA.

“We want assurances of anti-fraud measures,” Essayli said. “That way the money is never stolen again.”

Carter said he hoped a transition plan would keep the parties from spending millions of dollars on attorneys’ fees that could otherwise go toward housing and services.

How we got here

In June, the Trump administration suspended LAHSA from applying for federal funding, alleging years of financial mismanagement. LAHSA then sued, and Carter blocked the suspension in August. Carter’s decision has so far held up on appeal.

LAHSA’s governing commission voted this month to give up its federal roles next year, including managing federal homelessness dollars and conducting the region’s annual homeless count. Local officials have been taking applications from organizations that want to take over those duties in 2027.

Meanwhile, investigations into fraud have been widening. Prosecutors have so far charged six people connected to L.A. homeless service providers. LAHSA has said none of its staff are implicated.

When asked if LAHSA’s current or past leadership has been culpable, Essayli recently said, "It is not against federal law to be incompetent, unfortunately.”

Major shifts happening

For decades, county, city and federal dollars have been managed mainly by LAHSA. But those funding streams are now being redirected in the wake of repeated findings of mismanagement.

L.A. County pulled roughly $300 million of its annual homelessness funding in July and gave it to its new in-house Department of Homeless Services and Housing.

That leaves the city as LAHSA’s last major funder. The City Council has explored leaving, but hasn't reached a decision yet. City staff has estimated that building a city homeless services department would take up to two years.

On the campaign trail, Councilmember Nithya Raman has pledged to exit LAHSA within her first year if elected mayor, while incumbent Mayor Karen Bass has said it would take "a couple of years."

What’s next

Carter did not rule Wednesday on federal funding. He scheduled a hearing for Oct. 27 and described it as “our decision-making day on so many matters.”

Before then, local officials are expected to select a replacement to take over LAHSA’s federal administrative roles.

Los Angeles city officials are asking LA28 to hand over a list of its contracts, saying the Olympics organizing committee could be in violation of its agreement with the city.

LA28’s annual financial report released last week included a broad review of the organization’s deals with contractors hired to help put on the event, but no names or detailed breakdowns of spending.

The Games Agreement between the city and LA28 requires the committee to submit the name, type, amount, term and purpose of each contract it has entered into worth more than $1 million.

No such list was provided in LA28’s report.

“It's inadequate, what we've been provided, and that's not acceptable,” City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said at a committee meeting on the 2028 Olympics Wednesday afternoon.

Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso said she has requested a full list from LA28 and is waiting to hear back.

Jacie Prieto Lopez, a spokesperson for LA28, said in an emailed statement to LAist that LA28 had received the request.

“We are working through those requests now and remain committed to meeting our obligations," she said.

Tso told the council committee she had seen a more detailed list of LA28’s contracts, but only when it was “flashed on the screen very quickly” at a meeting with her, Olympics organizers, the city administrative officer and the mayor’s office.

“So we don't have a list,” Tso said. “We don't have the names of the folks. We don't have the dollar amounts.”

Tso told the council that Olympics organizers were wary about making contracts public, due to concerns that public disclosure could harm negotiations over competitive event sponsor deals.

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez said that did not satisfy LA28’s obligations to the city.

“They can just be like, ‘Flash it, we're done, and we did our requirement,’” Soto-Martinez said.

The federal financial aid process opened this past week for students applying to college for next year. But for many California students, a source of state financial help remains untapped.

In 2022, the state launched the California Kids Investment and Development Savings Program, also known as CalKIDS, and began creating investment accounts for more than 6 million children in the state to use for higher education.

Babies born on or after July 1, 2022, can get up to $175 in their accounts, while low-income public school students can claim up to $1500.

In Los Angeles County, about 1.1 million public school students are eligible for the accounts, but fewer than 20% of kids have claimed them, said Cassandra DiBenedetto, executive director of California’s ScholarShare Investment Board. The claim rate is even less for babies — about 11%.

“The money itself, it has a long trajectory. So you have these newborns, and there's not a sense of urgency among some parents; they know the account's there, it’s been created. Parents are busy,” DiBenedetto said.

There is no deadline to claim the money, which is already growing in the investment accounts. (You do have to use the money by age 26). But DiBenedetto says kids are more likely to see themselves as college-bound if they have it — and will be able to watch the account grow over time.

“ You talk to second-and third graders who are like, ‘I'm gonna go to UC Santa Barbara,’ ‘I'm gonna go to Cal Berkeley,’” she said.

The state is working with the Los Angeles Unified School District and other school districts to get students signed up.

The city’s top financial adviser is recommending that the Los Angeles City Council deny a police department request to procure 300 additional vehicles for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics.

The report, submitted to the council Monday by City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, found that the L.A. Police Department would have enough vehicles to temporarily expand its fleet during the Games without the additional cars.

LAPD officials had previously requested around $31 million, arguing the additional officers deployed for the Games will need additional vehicles for their police work.

But Szabo disagreed in his report, finding instead that the department would soon have a large enough fleet.

“Given the current available vehicles and new vehicle procurements which have already been funded, it is not recommended to authorize the procurement of any additional police vehicles for the 2028 Games deployment,” Szabo wrote.

An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment on the city administrative officer’s report. Previously, the department has emphasized that its request seeks only to temporarily expand its fleet, with plans to retire old vehicles after the Games.

The police department has offered different estimates of how many additional vehicles it will need to patrol the Olympics. Two months after the LAPD asked for an additional 300 vehicles, the department released another report estimating an even higher need: 576 police vehicles.

Either way, Szabo’s report found that more than 1,100 police vehicles not yet in use by the department were funded in the past three budget cycles. He said those should be sufficient for the Olympics.