Utilities are worried that homes switching to electric heating, electric cooking and electric-vehicle charging will create major new strains on their power grids. And homeowners looking to go all-electric face steep costs if they need to upgrade their grid connections to handle bigger electrical loads. A new report suggests that both problems could be addressed by the latest smart electric panels.
In many cases, these panels can keep homes’ electricity consumption low enough to avoid the need for grid updates, according to the report from pro-electrification nonprofit Rewiring America, based on data from thousands of homes equipped with smart panels made by San Francisco–based startup Span.
Span’s smart electric panels cost about $4,500, quite a bit more than the average of $1,000 to $2,500 for the standard electromechanical panels used in almost every electrified home and building in the world. But the kind of load-shifting capabilities they provide could defer the even greater costs of upgrading power grids to serve all-electric homes — a fact that could encourage utilities and their regulators to look for ways to shoulder some of the costs of the panels as an alternative.
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“It’s expensive and inefficient for a utility to upgrade” the grid every time a customer wants to add an EV charger or electric appliance, Span CEO Arch Rao said in an interview. “We think there’s a much more economic and faster solve: upgrading the panel at the edge of the grid.”
Span panels are among a class of smart-home devices that can turn EV chargers, electric heat pumps, water heaters, dryers and other hefty household loads on and off to ensure they’re not all drawing power from the grid at once.
That relatively simple intervention can keep a home’s peak load below the limits that might require the utility to do a service upgrade. These can take months to complete and cost anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, with much of the expense borne by the homeowner and some by the utility, depending on local regulations. The need for such upgrades is a potential deal-killer for home electrification projects. And if enough homes stay below those limits, then utilities could avoid upgrading their transformers to meet increased electricity demand.
“There have been studies in the past talking about the potential doubling and tripling of electricity demand due to increased electrification,” Rao said. Getting households to switch their heating, cooking and transportation from fossil fuels to electricity will be an essential part of decarbonizing the U.S. economy, experts say. But if all homes in the U.S. needed a $5,000 service upgrade to make that possible, total costs for those upgrades could approach $250 billion, Rewiring America estimates. Technologies that can help avoid those service upgrades will be critical.
To test the thesis that smart panels can make it possible to avoid upgrades, Span analyzed data from thousands of its customers’ homes across all major U.S. climate zones. The company’s remote-controllable panels collect data at the second-by-second level for all major circuits, providing “really high temporal resolution” of how homeowners use their appliances and “how close they are to the threshold of capacity,” Rao said.
The data indicated that total household electrical loads rarely combined in ways that pushed total grid demand over 80 amps, and that such “peak events” lasted an average of only 12 minutes. Many older single-family homes in the U.S. have 100-amp thresholds. So there’s plenty of wiggle room to halt EV charging, water heating or other power demands that don’t require constant, steady power.
The chart below shows how one real-world Span-equipped home could be kept under that threshold simply by postponing EV charging when other household loads are spiking.
“We’re able to do that, without any inconvenience to customers, just by shifting one major appliance,” Rao said. “Shifting the EV charger, shifting the water heater [or] changing the set point on the air conditioning. That’s all it takes.”
The 80-amp ceiling is “a conservative threshold,” Rao said. It’s also well below the 200-amp service that Span’s panels support. A report last year from the Austin, Texas–based nonprofit research organization Pecan Street estimated that about 48 million U.S. single-family homes have 100-amp service that might require upgrading to support electric heating, cooking and EV charging.
Pecan Street estimates that these electrical panel upgrades can cost between $1,000 and $5,000 and take several weeks to complete. Contractors in different parts of the country have cited higher upgrade costs and longer wait times, depending on the scope of the project and market demand for electricians and equipment.
Span has largely served higher-end customers installing rooftop solar, backup batteries and EV chargers, but it’s also participating in projects aimed at providing resilience to churches and community centers. Whatever the setting might be, Span’s panels could help projects avoid the need for utility service upgrades.
Rewiring America has proposed federal legislation to provide incentives for electrical panel upgrades as well as for electric appliances. Without incentives, upgrade costs and delays could prevent homeowners from making the switch to electric when appliances break down and need replacement.
Homeowners are often “confronted with these questions at very inopportune times,” Rewiring America CEO Ari Matusiak said — typically when their appliances break down and need to be replaced. “It’s not an acceptable answer to say, ‘You’re going to have to wait three weeks for an electrician to upgrade your breaker box before you can take a hot shower.’”
But Span’s data indicates that homes with 100-amp or 150-amp electrical service could manage additional electrical loads to keep their peak grid draws well within limits. Policymakers need to be “thinking about the breaker box and the wiring and outlets as part of our overall climate infrastructure,” Matusiak said. “How do you transform the market such that the default is the efficient electric machine being the most affordable and convenient to purchase and install?”
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