The electric grid is built to handle periods of peak demand, even though those peaks represent only a small portion of the hours in a year. That means substantial capacity is available during other parts of the day.
EV charging can take advantage of that flexibility. Unlike many other forms of electricity demand, vehicle charging can often be moved by several hours without changing what the customer ultimately gets: a vehicle that’s ready to drive when it’s needed.
EV Charging Is Flexible
Consider a typical vehicle that gets home in the evening and isn’t used again until the next morning. It may be plugged in for 10 or 12 hours, but it doesn’t need to charge that whole time to be fully charged in the morning.
Managed charging lets you shift charging within the available window based on electricity prices, grid conditions, customer needs, or other signals.
For a customer, that can mean lower charging costs. For a utility, it can mean serving additional electricity demand when the system has more available capacity instead of adding to an existing peak.
EVs Are Not the Biggest Driver of New Electricity Demand
Utilities are planning for significant load growth in the coming years. As our friends at Electrification Coalition have published, the projected 166 gigawatts of peak load growth in the U.S. includes roughly 90 gigawatts from data centers and another 30 gigawatts from manufacturing.
Transportation electrification is part of the picture, but it is a relatively modest share of that projected growth. Even a full transition to EVs for all new car sales by 2035 would raise national electricity demand by only about 1% annually, well below the grid’s historic 3.2% average annual growth rate.
More importantly, EV charging is flexible in ways many other new loads are not. A data center can’t simply shut down for three hours because the grid is busy. An EV can often wait three hours to charge. That gives utilities a tool to manage new electricity demand rather than building the system around every new load occurring at the same time.
Michigan Is Already Putting Managed Charging to Work
Michigan utilities are already putting managed charging to work. Consumers Energy reports that its EV load-management programs achieved more than 95% off-peak charging between April 2024 and March 2025, exceeding its original goal of 70%. DTE’s Smart Charge pilot achieved a similar result in 2025, with 97% of charging occurring during off-peak periods. DTE also found that its load-balancing system reduced the overnight charging peak among participating customers by approximately 2 megawatts.
That means EV customers are using electricity when the system has more capacity available, rather than simply adding demand during the most expensive periods.
For fleets, the benefits can be even more significant. Managed charging can help fleet operators reduce electricity costs, manage demand charges, and make smarter decisions about charging infrastructure. We’ve covered the practical side of managed charging in our Clean Fleets Hub blog, Managing Your Charging to Lower Costs and Meet Your Business Goals, written by Sophia Schuster at Michigan EIBC.
Making EV Growth Work for the Grid
Managed charging doesn’t eliminate the need for grid investment. As EV adoption grows, utilities will still need to plan for new load and upgrade infrastructure where local capacity requires it.
EV charging gives utilities something valuable: flexibility. The question isn’t simply how much electricity EVs will use. It’s when they use it, where they use it, and how much control customers and utilities have over that demand.
When charging is managed effectively, EVs can use the grid’s existing capacity better while helping customers save money. The opportunity grows even bigger when EVs can do more than consume electricity.
This is the second installment in our series, EVs & the Grid: From New Demand to Grid Resource.