The fear that millions of electric vehicles will overwhelm South Africa's fragile power grid sounds logical, but the actual numbers tell a different story.
Replacing every petrol and diesel car in the country with an electric model would increase national electricity demand by only about 10%.
Rather than facing a catastrophic grid collapse, the real challenge lies in managing how and when we charge, using smart demand management, private solar, and off-peak power to navigate the transition cleanly.
Imagine every petrol and diesel car on our roads being replaced by an electric one. Instead of filling up at a service station, we would all be plugging in at home, at work, in shopping centres and along the highways.
No doubt that would put enormous pressure on an electricity system that already has enough to worry about.
However, according to Winstone Jordaan, managing director of GridCars, we may be looking at the problem from the wrong point of view.
In a recent conversation about the future of EV charging in South Africa, Jordaan posed an interesting question. If every car in the country suddenly became electric overnight, how much more electricity would we need?
My instinct was that it would be an enormous amount, so I said, “100 times more.”
The actual answer, according to Jordaan, is closer to 10% more.
It is not the apocalypse
The idea that millions of electric cars will suddenly overwhelm the electricity grid is an argument that sounds convincing until you look at the numbers.
Yes, an electric vehicle needs electricity and millions of vehicles charging at the same time would create challenges. But the total amount of additional electricity required is not anywhere near as dramatic as we may think.
Jordaan believes the bigger challenge is not whether South Africa can produce enough electricity, but how intelligently we manage the additional demand.
That means smart charging, solar power, batteries and making better use of the electricity network we already have. “Energy is not our problem. Charging is not going to be our problem,” he says.
The bigger issue, he believes, is getting people to commit to buying electric vehicles and managing the transition as the market grows.
The grid will need to evolve
That doesn’t mean South Africa can simply carry on as we are.
More electric vehicles will require investment in the electricity network and additional capacity in certain places. An office park where hundreds of employees arrive every morning and plug in their cars is very different from a suburban home where one vehicle is charged overnight.
Shopping centres, businesses and other high-demand locations may need additional power, while batteries and solar could help reduce the pressure.
Jordaan has a pragmatic way of looking at it.
“If a new shopping centre is built, the road leading to it may eventually need to be widened because there is more traffic. That doesn’t mean the original two-lane road was badly designed. It was simply designed for a different level of demand.”
He believes the same applies to South Africa's electricity network.
The grid was built for the requirements of its time. As those requirements change, it needs to evolve.
Solar could play a bigger role
Ironically, one of the unintended consequences of Eskom’s woes is the growing popularity of solar power.
Many of the people buying electric vehicles already have solar installations at home, according to Jordaan.
That means instead of buying all the energy needed to run your car from the grid, some of it can come from the sun.
The same principle can be applied on a much larger scale, with commercial solar installations, batteries and other energy sources contributing to the charging network.
The future is therefore unlikely to be as simple as “plug everything into Eskom”, but a mixture of technologies working together. He describes this as a hybrid approach, where the most appropriate energy source is used for a particular location and situation.
Eskom is getting ready
Eskom itself is already preparing for an electric future.
Jordaan says Eskom has been installing EV chargers at its sites around the country, with plans to expand the network. The power utility’s Distribution Division has a target of moving towards an entirely electric vehicle fleet by 2035 and its entire conventional fleet with EVs by 2040.
So, if electric vehicles are going to become part of South Africa's transport future, the country's electricity provider is going to have to be part of that future too.
The arrival of millions of electric cars will not mean that South Africa suddenly needs to build an entirely new electricity system, but it means we need to become smarter about the one we already have.
No doubt there will be challenges. Some parts of the network will need upgrading, some locations will require additional capacity, and managing demand will become increasingly important.
But the idea that switching to electric vehicles automatically means the grid will collapse may be another EV myth that needs to be put to bed.
EV adoption may be manageable, but only with investment in generation, distribution infrastructure, charging controls and reliable implementation.
The cars are changing and the way we produce, store and use electricity will have to change with them.
willem.vdputte@nationalmg.co.za