The continued growth of renewable sources of energy may lead to grid-level intermittent supply and demand mismatch. There are a number of research and engineering solutions that address this problem including grid-level energy storage and demand response via a smart grid infrastructure. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is a promising approach because it uses the existing resource of electric vehicle batteries as the energy storage medium. Electric vehicles charge at night while power is cheap, commute to work, and discharge when demand is high yielding the electric vehicle owner a profit. This simple sounding process has a number of complicating economic issues and in this talk we discuss them. For example, charge/discharge efficiency, battery degradation, and location-based marginal pricing of electricity . Our preliminary conclusion is V2G is not beneficial to a electric vehicle owner with current technology and electricity pricing, even with public policy tools. We also apply an economic analysis at the utility level to see how V2G affects load and what issues can arise. For example, as solar makes up more of the electricity generation mix, the highest price of electricity may be at nigh when generation is minimal. V2G can improve the peak and demand mismatch in such cases.

Can parked cars and carbon taxes create a profit? The economics of vehicle-to-grid energy storage for peak reduction

255th National Meeting (2018)

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