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Title: Clean vehicles as an enabler for a clean electricity grid

Journal Article · · Environmental Research Letters
 [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [1]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Emerging Futures, LLC, Berkeley, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

California has issued ambitious targets to decarbonize transportation through the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs), and to decarbonize the electricity grid through the expansion of both renewable generation and energy storage. These parallel efforts can provide an untapped synergistic opportunity for clean transportation to be an enabler for a clean electricity grid. To quantify this potential, we forecast the hourly system-wide balancing problems arising out to 2025 as more renewables are deployed and load continues to grow. We then quantify the system-wide balancing benefits from EVs modulating the charging or discharging of their batteries to mitigate renewable intermittency, without compromising the mobility needs of drivers. Our results show that with its EV deployment target and with only one-way charging control of EVs, California can achieve much of the same benefit of its Storage Mandate for mitigating renewable intermittency, but at a small fraction of the cost. Moreover, EVs provide many times these benefits if two-way charging control becomes widely available. Thus, EVs support the state's renewable integration targets while avoiding much of the tremendous capital investment of stationary storage that can instead be applied towards further deployment of clean vehicles.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Vehicle Technologies Office (EE-3V); USDOE Office of Science (SC); LBNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1437217
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1461987
Journal Information:
Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 5; ISSN 1748-9326
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (2)

Impact of electric vehicles on the cost-competitiveness of generation and storage technologies in the electricity system journal December 2019
An Economic Analysis of Load Leveling with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) in an Electricity Market Environment: The Korean Case journal April 2019

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