Assessment of vehicle-side costs and profits of providing vehicle-to-grid services

Abstract

The rapid expansion of electric vehicle market brings a huge stock of batteries, which can potentially serve as distributed energy storage systems to provide grid services through Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology. Existing research on V2G's economic viability often simplifies intricate technical details and neglects the influence of key parameters on the results. To address these gaps, a technology-rich model was developed to evaluate the vehicle-side costs and profits of V2G. Given the current state of V2G-related technologies and costs, V2G's levelized cost of storage ranges from $0.085/kWh to $0.243/kWh, and its net present value ranges from $-1,317 to $3,013, depending on the operational strategies implemented. The variations in assessment results due to changes in key parameters were further evaluated to analyze the impacts of technological advancements and user behavior. With advancements in battery technologies, the net present value of V2G is expected to reach approximately $7,000. These findings underscore V2G's potential cost competitiveness against mainstream stationary energy storage technologies and suggest that, with appropriate technological development and usage scenarios, V2G could play a pivotal role in the new electricity system with renewable energy sources as the main component, offering substantial profitability.