And then add on the infrastructure required to get it to your house from the transformer - cables - of which many are overhead in rural areas and the poles have a limit on how much cable weight they can take. Or for buried supplies just imagine the amount of roads that would need to be dug up to increase cable capacity to homes. It does also raise the question of how much CO2 will all of the required upgrades generate in terms of manufacturing and installation across the whole infrastructure - or will the Govt. just ignore that in its rush to convince EVs are our salvation?While overall generation capacity may cope you hit the nail on the head with residential infrastructure.
We recently had a power cut which lasted 9 hours. I got so fed up of waiting I walked out to our local substation and had a chat with the guys to find out what was going on. Turned out some prat from BT had dug up the 11kv feeder cable.
I have some previous experience with electrical distribution so It got me thinking, a typical residential substation is 1000 or 1500 KVA and serves several hundred houses. Come 2030 and beyond if every house fed by our local substation was to plug in their EV to a 7KW charger when they got home from work, I can tell you categorically that the sub couldn't meet the demand. As you say the move to heat pumps is not going to help. Bigger substations isn't a likely solution as there are 349,000 pole mounted transformers, 230,000 distribution substations, 4800 primary substations and over 1000 grid supply points in the UK. That's a lot of very expensive infrastructure to upgrade. It's more likely we will have to employ a smart means of ensuring that they are not all charging at the same time.
We will probably see the government suddenly supporting WFH as only way to take the load of the inadequate infrastructure. Or will they promote a new home based diesel generators grant scheme in true Govt. twisted thinking.