The record-breaking heat wave in China, which started back in June, has evaporated over half the hydroelectricity generation capacity in Sichuan, a southwestern province that gets 81% of its electricity from hydropower plants Industrial production and everyday life in the region are being put on hold because of a decrease in energy supply.
EV charging restrictions have been instituted by the government as the power supply has become unreliable.
It took as long as two hours this week for a charging station to be found in Sichuan and the neighboring region of Chongqing. Most of the public charging stations in the region are closed due to government restrictions on commercial electricity usage.
On August 24th, only two of the 31 Supercharger Stations in or near the province's capital city of Chengdu were working as normal, according to a picture sent to MIT Technology Review by a Chinese owner.
EV owners are being encouraged or forced to charge only during off-peak hours. The peak hours for electricity usage in the region are from 8 a.m. to midnight. State Grid, China's largest state-owned electric utility company, also builds and operates EV charging stations; it announced on August 19 that in three provinces that have over 140 million residents and 800,000 electric vehicles in total, the company will offer 50% off coupons. The total power consumed during peak hours would go down because the efficiency of 350,000 charging posts is being reduced.
The impact can be seen in videos shared on Chinese social media, which show long lines of electric vehicles waiting outside charging stations even after midnight. Taxi drivers rely on their vehicles to make a living. A taxi driver told an EVinfluencer that he only started charging at 5 a.m. after waiting in the line for almost 24 hours. You are always standing in line. I didn't get a lot of business today, but I'm in the line again now. The battery is running out of power.
Some people are reverting to using fossil fuel because of the charging challenges. The owner of a gas-powered car decided to drive his other car for fear that he wouldn't be able to find a place to rest before he returned to his home. The driver from Chengdu who owns a plug-in hybrid told MIT Technology Review that she switched to gas this week because it was cheaper.
The EV industry was surprised by the sudden difficulty of charging. A large-scale power shortage is something that has never been seen in China. While China leads the world in EV adoption, there are still infrastructure weaknesses that need to be fixed. The problems are exposed once something like these power restrictions happens. EV owners who rely on public charging posts are having trouble.
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