Palo Alto is considering investing US $150 million toward modernizing its distribution system, but that will take two to three years of planning, as well as another three to four years or more to perform all the necessary work, but only if the utility can get the engineering and management staff, which continues to be in short supply there and at other utilities across the country. Further, like other industries, the energy business has become digitized, meaning the skills needed are different from those previously required.
That's like an 8 year timeline. How is an 8 year timeline a pipe dream?
Like there are lots of issues to address, but not many that seem insurmountable.
For another point of reference here - Palo Alto's annual city budget is over $900 million.. $150M over 8 years represents at most 2% of the budget over that time frame. They're already planning much of that work, and big portions are already included in their annual capital budget, so realistically, the net increase is maybe 1% of the budget? 1.5%? It's a serious amount of money so should be appropriately weighed, but to pretend like it's fantastical is just disingenuous.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-ev-transition-explained-265846...