Increasing the Number of Electric Trucks We Can Charge Through Flexible Service Connections

RMI analysis indicates that flexible service connections—agreements where charging sites curtail load during peak hours—could allow PG&E's feeders to support an additional 25,000 to 70,000 heavy-duty trucks per year. The study finds that shifting just 1 megawatt of load away from peak hours would enable the majority of feeders to charge 10 more trucks than traditional planning allows, often with minimal operational impact since most trucks are parked during peak grid hours.

• Flexible service connections allow new charging sites to connect to the grid by agreeing to curtail load during constrained peak hours, which accelerates energization timelines and reduces site upgrade costs for fleets while allowing utilities to grow their customer rate base using existing infrastructure.
• RMI's analysis of PG&E data shows that shifting 1 megawatt of load away from peak hours for the required limited days would allow the majority of feeders to charge 10 more heavy-duty trucks compared to business-as-usual load planning.
• Scaling flexible service connections across approximately 2,000 PG&E feeders could enable the charging of an additional 25,000 to 70,000 heavy-duty trucks annually, a capacity sufficient to absorb the load of every electric truck purchased in California in the previous year without grid upgrades.
• The number of additional trucks supported increases as the flexibility window for shifting load expands from 2 to 6 hours; for the median feeder, this increases from 3 to 22 trucks for regional heavy-duty trucks and from 9 to 64 for urban heavy-duty trucks.
• Load shifting is operationally feasible for most California fleets because heavy-duty trucks with daily mileages under 300 miles typically park between 4 p.m. and 5 a.m., covering peak grid hours, and often require less than half of that time to charge at 75 kW.
• Peak load hours in Northern California typically occur between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. during summer; for 60% of the analyzed feeders, load shifting would only be necessary during the month of July in a two-hour flexibility scenario.
• PG&E's FlexConnect program has already demonstrated real-world success, enabling PepsiCo to add 20 electric trucks on regional haul routes that were previously diesel-powered.

APA

RMI (2025). Increasing the Number of Electric Trucks We Can Charge Through Flexible Service Connections. https://rmi.org/resources/increasing-the-number-of-electric-trucks-we-can-charge-through-flexible-service-connections/

Chicago

RMI. Increasing the Number of Electric Trucks We Can Charge Through Flexible Service Connections. 2025. https://rmi.org/resources/increasing-the-number-of-electric-trucks-we-can-charge-through-flexible-service-connections/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Increasing the Number of Electric Trucks We Can Charge Through Flexible Service Connections |date=15 December 2025 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/increasing-the-number-of-electric-trucks-we-can-charge-through-flexible-service-connections/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2025increasing, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Increasing the Number of Electric Trucks We Can Charge Through Flexible Service Connections}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2025}, month = dec, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/increasing-the-number-of-electric-trucks-we-can-charge-through-flexible-service-connections/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }