Electric Vehicles as Grid Resources

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Electric vehicles (EV) are poised as environmentally-friendly alternatives to conventional combustion vehicles because of the internal battery which uses electricity for transportation. It is estimated the global EV penetration will hit upwards of 20 million on the road by 2020. Even with this technology available today, consumers' EV adoption is hindered due the high upfront cost, lack of adequate charging infrastructure, range anxiety, and slow charging times. On the other hand, the potential revolution of the transportation sector will bring forth economic benefits to the operations of the power system. The EV batteries allow flexibility in the amount of power and the specific time of day when they can charge and discharge. Such features enable the extraction of resources from these batteries in order to benefit the power system and even EV owner's themselves. However, the challenge remains on how to reduce the issues of EV ownership while the power system extracts services from EVs that benefit operations. The main motivation behind this dissertation is to develop frameworks that take advantage of EVs as grid resources.