Increasing earthquake resilience for the power grid in southwestern British Columbia: integrated disaster planning for the shift from fuel to electric vehicles

As electric vehicle (EV) adoption increases, transportation services will shift dependence from liquid fuel infrastructure to electric power infrastructure. Since transportation plays a major role in disaster response and recovery, this shift in dependence has important implications for coupling electrical grids and transport resilience. The implications for the electrical grid for southwestern British Columbia, Canada are examined, motivated by this region’s high EV adoption rate and the potential for a catastrophic magnitude 9.5 earthquake. A comparison of the resilience of the electrical infrastructure compared to the fuel infrastructure is provided and approaches for increasing resilience in the region for EV power supply are discussed. This paper compiles lessons learned from past large earthquakes in Chile, Japan, and New Zealand with consideration given to successes and failures. While this paper was written with a focus on southwestern British Columbia, many of the suggestions for increasing power system resilience could be applied in other seismically active locations during the transition to EVs. This paper also considers integrated disaster resilience planning for the changing transport landscape from fuel vehicles to EVs.