The potential and viability of V2G for California BEV drivers

Abstract

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) adoption is hindered by uncertainties regarding its effects on battery lifetime and vehicle usability. These uncertainties are compounded by limited insight into real-world vehicle usage. Here, we leverage real-world Californian BEV usage data to design and evaluate a user-centric V2G strategy. We identified four clustered driver profiles for V2G assessment, ranging from "Daily Chargers" to "Public Chargers". We show that V2G participation is most feasible for "Daily Chargers," and that the effects on battery lifetime depend on calendar aging sensitivity. For batteries with low sensitivity, V2G participation increases capacity loss for all drivers. However, for batteries with high sensitivity, V2G participation can lead to negligible changes in capacity or even improved capacity retention, particularly for drivers who tend to keep their batteries at high states of charge. Our findings enable stakeholders to better assess the potential and viability of V2G adoption.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: Example of a driver's usage profile, with our V2G strategy compared to it in a conventional charging scenario where the battery begins charging immediately upon plug-in. The V2G strategy consists of 1) discharging to the grid between 6 PM and 9 PM, stopping either 9 PM or when the battery reaches 50% SOC, whichever occurs first, 2) battery rest period, 3) charging to the driver’s desired SOC by 4 AM.
• Figure 2: Example month of usage of four key profiles of Californian vehicle usage behavior critical for V2G assessment. Displayed driver profiles are synthetic constructs generated from the average values of each cluster’s behavioral features; individual vehicle usage data is not displayed to ensure driver confidentiality.
• Figure 3: Simulated 10-year capacity loss for three battery designs under the usage of the four Californian vehicle usage behavior profiles. See Appendix Figure \ref{['fig:battery_degradation_vehicle_clusters_with_error']} for results with 95% confidence intervals.
• Figure 4: Proportion of total capacity loss after 10 years attributed to calendar aging for all California vehicles, shown separately for each battery design. Capacity loss due to cycle aging is the difference between total capacity loss and capacity loss from calendar aging.
• Figure 5: V2G Participation with integration of our V2G strategy (Section \ref{['subsec:V2G_strategy']}) without vehicle usage behavior change. Bar plots show the population average for each vehicle usage profile; error bars represent the 95% confidence interval.