Washington (Platts)--9Oct2008

The California Independent System Operator said Thursday it is eyeing an
expected influx of thousands of plug-in electric cars in the state by the year
2012 that could pose a challenge to its grid's power flows unless the cars are
developed to charge only at night.

The ISO met with researchers from the University of California-Davis on
Wednesday, who are studying plug-in cars, to get a handle on what sort of
impact plug-in cars will have on the grid in coming years.

"We really don't know yet," what the impact will be, and the university
researchers were not able to shed much light, ISO spokesman Gregg Fishman
said.

"We know we will need new power plants by 2012 to meet load growth and
because of the retirement of old units, but we shouldn't need more new power
plants" just to handle demand from plug-in vehicles, "if they are equipped
with the right technology so they charge off peak," Fishman said.

"We did learn that 2012 is the first year the manufacturers and dealers
will be really geared up to sell them retail. How popular they will be remains
to be seen, and will probably have a lot to do with where [gasoline] prices go
between now and then," he said.

Individually, plug-in cars do not drain a lot of power, but having a few
hundred thousand of them all plugged in at once will impact the grid, Fishman
said.

"It's hard to get more specific than that, because there are a lot of
design elements still up in the air, including how big the batteries should
be, how long should they take to charge and how much drive time do they need
to provide," he said.

--Daniel Guido, daniel_guido@platts.com