Abstract
Although the increasing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is overall positive for the environment and for the sustainable use of resources, the extra effort that requires purchasing an EV when compared to an equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE) competitor make them less appealing from an economical point of view. In addition to that, there are other challenges in EVs (autonomy, battery, recharge time, etc.) that are non-existent in ICE vehicles. Nevertheless, the possibility of providing electricity to the power grid via vehicle-to-grid technology (V2G), along with lower maintenance costs, could prove that EVs are the most economically efficient option in the long run. Indeed, enabling V2G would make EVs capable of saving some costs for their vehicle owners, thus making them a better long-term mobility choice that could trigger deep changes in habits of vehicle owners. This paper describes a cost–benefit analysis of how consumers can make use of V2G solutions, in a way that they can use their vehicle for transport purposes and obtain revenues when injecting energy into the power grid.
Highlights
The smart grid is one of the most promising infrastructures developed during the last years for the improvement of access to electricity and its usage, as it is bringing key benefits: a combination of existing information and communication technology standards [1], the power grid itself to enhance the stability of the system [2,3], and the incorporation of new actors in the energy markets [4]
The equations of the mathematical model described previously have been put to use for three different use cases, namely, professional drivers, frequent drivers, and occasional drivers, under certain considerations and assumptions as described in the following subsections
It must be noted that the figures corresponding to professional, frequent, and occasional drivers are strongly related to the information that has been inferred from several sources present in this manuscript, such as [50] and [58]
Summary
The smart grid is one of the most promising infrastructures developed during the last years for the improvement of access to electricity and its usage, as it is bringing key benefits: a combination of existing information and communication technology standards [1], the power grid itself to enhance the stability of the system [2,3], and the incorporation of new actors in the energy markets [4]. Energy storage is a major feature, due to the fact that it has to be enabled and balanced in distributed-like systems for increased effectiveness [8] and can be used to trade it in the aforementioned energy markets or to provide energy in moments where it cannot be harvested from the environment (like photovoltaic deployments during the night) It allows prosumers (that is, energy consumers able to produce their own electricity by means of distributed energy resources) to have more energy available for their private use and utilize the surplus power they produce as a source of revenues. The cost–benefit model that is presented in this manuscript shows a thorough comparison of the expenses between EVs and ICE vehicles during an extended period of time, as well as an economic assessment between purchasing and renting the battery of an EV and how costs vary depending on several different profiles of vehicle usage. Acknowledgments and references are displayed as the final parts of the manuscript
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