100% Renewable

Can you charge your electric car with solar-powered batteries?

If you're driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and stop in Baker, you sure can.

Clean energy

In the small California desert town of Baker, near the turn off to Death Valley, an electric vehicle service station just got a little more energy-independent and resilient.

Electrify America added what it believes is the first megawatt-scale battery system at a U.S. charging station to its facility in Baker. The charging station already boasted a 66 kilowatt solar canopy, shading users from the sun and harnessing solar energy to power the cars that stop there to charge. The 1.5 megawatt storage system is expected to help the station consistently meet charging demand and send energy back into the grid when needed.

Electric vehicles are on the rise. According to our Renewables on the Rise dashboard, Americans bought almost 647,000 plug-in EVs in 2021 – a nearly 13-fold increase from 2012. Meanwhile, the number of EV chargers nationwide exceeded 120,000 – a nearly 20-fold increase from 2012.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill included $7.5 billion in funding to support the buildout of a national network of public EV charging stations. Experts expect that level of investment will get America roughly half-way to the Biden Administration’s goal of 500,000 public chargers in place by 2030.

“Electric vehicles sales are surging across America and so is the infrastructure to charge them,” said Johanna Neumann, senior director of our campaign for 100% Renewable Energy. “Powering how we get around with clean renewable energy from the sun is good news for public health and the climate.”

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