Abstract
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.
Highlights
Achieving deep global greenhouse gas reductions targets requires the electrification of transportation soon and at significant scale [1]
California is in the process of deploying substantial amounts of renewable generation, targeting 50% of grid-supplied energy coming from renewables by 2030
We show that electric vehicles (EVs) with only V1G capability provide renewables integration capability equivalent to 1.0 GW of stationary storage, a large fraction of the 1.3 GW Storage Mandate, but at a small fraction of the cost
Summary
Achieving deep global greenhouse gas reductions targets requires the electrification of transportation soon and at significant scale [1]. Towards this goal, California’s Governor Brown has released the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, targeting the deployment of 1.5 million ZEVs by 2025, the vast majority of which will be plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) [2]. California is taking aggressive steps to decarbonize the electricity grid through a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policy that requires 33% of grid energy to come from renewable generation by 2020, and 50% by 2030 [8]. While the ZEV Mandate, RPS, and Storage Mandate will make important progress towards achieving California’s targets, a substantial synergistic opportunity exists if EVs from the ZEV Mandate are used to provide grid storage to support renewables integration
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