It's only been a couple of weeks since California ISO all but begged people to avoid using electricity in the early evenings, but a new study out of the Bay Area advises drivers to charge electric cars during the day.
“It doesn’t really matter at all,” said Amy Lai. “I charge any time of the day depending on what my schedule is, where I end up going."
Most electric vehicle owners charge at night when they are home. But, a Stanford study said it’s time to change times.
“There is a distinct advantage to charging your vehicle in the daytime,” said Ram Rajagopal of the Stanford Sustainable Systems Lab.
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The professor said that although this goes against what our recent California ISO flex alerts advised, charging during the day takes advantage of renewable energy, like solar, and saves the night-time grid from all the energy car charging requires.
"The EV use is a lot more impactful than doing your laundry or some of these other activities," said Rajagopal.
But there's another school of thought on this. One that says that with California going towards EVs to go green and cut pollution, the emphasis should be on getting more EVs, not telling people when to charge them up.
"There is nothing wrong with charging at night, it's clean, it's good, it's the right thing to do," said Dr. Gil Tal, director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis.
