A study is revealing some of the challenges that electric vehicles will pose to northern power grids — and it’ll likely be revised now that Canada has a plan for phasing out the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks.
“At no point in our studies did we consider 100 per cent electric vehicle adoption,” said Michael Ross, a researcher at Yukon University who is leading the study.
Ross, an industrial chair in northern energy innovation, said his research is looking at slow to high adoption rates of electric vehicles in Dawson City and parts of Whitehorse and Yellowknife. So far, it’s showing some of the ways residential power grids will be strained if people in those neighbourhoods add Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations to their homes, he said.
