Are electric cars dangerous for the electricity network in France? These figures put your feet back on the ground

The electric car in France has never been so popular. Indeed, registration figures continue to grow year after year, and today we have more than 2 million connected cars on the roads. In a country like ours where electricity is mainly carbon-free, it takes on its full meaning in the current ecological and energy transition.

However, this transformation of the vehicle fleet is accompanied by questions which may be legitimate: what is the energy impact of this major development? In other words, aren’t we heading for disaster if everyone starts charging their electric car at the same time? The challenge for the years to come is indeed to evaluate, manage and optimize the total energy consumption induced by the replacement of thermal vehicles with electric ones.

A popular belief that the energy demand of electric vehicles cannot be met by existing infrastructure is however quite far from reality. Other consumption items, notably heating, are much more energy intensive and potentially difficult to satisfy. In France, everything seems ready to meet demand, thanks to a varied and robust energy mix, although some adaptations could be necessary during periods of peak consumption.

We will see what the consumption of electric cars represents today, and imagine the future, in particular using the data provided by RTE. What if electric cars weren’t a problem for the grid, but rather part of the solution?

Does the charging infrastructure in 2024 consume a lot?

Avere publishes its monthly national barometer of charging infrastructures open to the publicwhere we learn in particular that there are more than 150,000 charging points open to the public as of October 31, 2024. We could then imagine that with so few chargers compared to the number of cars in circulation, the latter will be overloaded , and therefore consume a lot of energy. The reality couldn’t be further from this.

Indeed, in October 2024, the total consumption of charging points in France was estimated at 45.9 GWh by Avere. In front, RTE shows consumption approximately 740 times greater over the month. In other words, the consumption of charging points in October 2024 in France represented no more than 0.14% of the country’s electricity consumption.

These figures should, however, be moderated: they do not take into account the home load, but again it is easy to show that it would not be significant at the moment. By taking increases for all entities, and therefore considering that an electric car travels 1,000 km per month, consuming 18 kWh per 100 km and imagining that there are 2,000,000 to recharge at home, the total monthly consumption reached 0.36 TWh.

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This represents around 1% of the country’s total monthly consumption. Once again, this quantity is a large increase, since it excludes many cases, but it allows us to give an order of magnitude of what home charging of electric cars consumes today. Over a year, we could estimate it at 4.5 TWh, which will allow us to compare it to other consumption items.

The largest consumption item in terms of residential uses — heating — consumes more than 40 TWh per year, or 70 times more than the consumption of the charging points described by Avere, or 9 times more than our estimate of consumption linked to the charging of 2,000,000 electric cars at home. If you would like to learn more about the distribution of consumption in France, EDF has an infographic available here.

What is the impact on the grid of electric car charging?

As seen above, the current consumption of electric cars is quite low, representing in the worst case only a hundredth of total consumption. However, what is sometimes worrying is not so much the average consumption, but rather the peak consumption. In this case, while when you plug in your smartphone at home, a few dozen watts at most are instantly called up, if you plug in your car, it can be 1,000 times more.

By imagining millions of electric cars that would be plugged in at the same time, are we heading for disaster? No. RTE has already discussed this scenario in detail, breaking it down into multiple hypotheses, the conclusions of which can be seen below.

In the most pessimistic case, 48 TWh would be consumed per year by electric vehicles, which would number 8.2 million in 2035. In addition to this, there would be 1 million shared autonomous electric vehicles, and 156,000 vehicles heavy electric. This consumption would then be 20% higher compared to the current consumption of residential heating, for example.

However, RTE has no problem meeting this demand, and the reason is quite simple: total consumption would not increase significantly, given that other areas will reduce their consumption by 2035.

In addition to total consumption, the impact of electric cars on the winter consumption peak is also a source of concern. As you can see from the different hypotheses above, in the worst case, there is 8 GW of additional power demand.

RTE explains this peak in its scenario, specifying that it is sufficient for electric car charges to be better controlled at home (55% of charges controlled, compared to only 40% in the scenario) to avoid this peak. In practice, this scenario therefore imagines that most drivers of electric cars begin their charging upon returning from work, at times when the system is already under tension. In fact, today, many are taking advantage of off-peak hours at night to recharge. It’s a safe bet that in 2035, this will be even more the case.

We have devoted a file dedicated to the conclusions of the RTE report on electric mobility to come here, if you wish to learn more on the subject.

Electric cars are the solution, not the problem

It is accepted that within ten years, the consumption of electric vehicles should represent around 10% of total French consumption. It is important to compare this figure with other data on electricity consumption. For example, between 2000 and 2010, French consumption increased by more than 10%, and the network was able to adapt without any problem.

There are reasons to be optimistic about the impact of electric vehicles on the network, because as RTE points out, this should present a good opportunity to accelerate the energy transition. With more than 22 hours per day when a car is stationary on average, that’s almost 95% of the time when the electric car battery can be used for something other than driving.

These are bi-directional charging technologies known as V2G, V2H or even V2L, and which can allow stationary and plugged-in cars to serve as a buffer, to absorb electricity when there is too much, and return it to the network when there is no longer enough. This is particularly the case with the Renault 5 E-Tech.

All this will begin to develop in the years to come, and we are already seeing that the state of today will not be the state of tomorrow. For example, off-peak hours should be modified by 2026, particularly in the summer period, to more closely link consumption to prices. This is just one of the many levers that will allow RTE to ensure a correct supply of electricity, without tension on the network, for all of France.

The consumption of electric vehicles is not a source of concern

As you will have understood, there is no reason to be alarmed about the consumption of electric vehicles in France. Whether today, with around 2 million connected cars, or in ten years with up to 15 million according to the most realistic forecasts, the national electricity network is built to be able to cope.

However, public authorities have their role to play, not only by encouraging individuals to switch to electricity, but also by proposing price adjustments which are in line with real production capacities. Today, this involves adjusting off-peak hours to better reflect reality, and why not tomorrow at negative rates to resell the electricity contained in your car’s battery if the network needs it.

The future will have to be electric cars combined with renewable energies to ensure carbon-free mobility, and if these two conditions are met, there will be many more levers for managing the electrical system than today.