Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are expected from the transportation sector as electric vehicle (EV) adoption increases and transport fueling is slowly shifted from gasoline to an increasingly clean electricity mix. Greenhouse gas emissions from power production will decline as power suppliers meet renewable portfolio standards and comply with regional greenhouse gas initiatives. A link between the transportation industry and the electric power industry is being propelled by the emergence of EVs in the marketplace.

A shift from fossil fuels to electricity for transportation energy will pose challenges for utility providers while also presenting opportunities for economic, grid reliability, and environmental benefits. Strategic integration of electric vehicles (EVs) with the grid would more fully realize the benefits that EVs offer and potentially make EV ownership more affordable through the provision of reliability and resilience services to the grid. The New York State roadmap presented here was informed by a preliminary research report, gap analysis, and stakeholder feedback; it identifies the current state of grid-interactive vehicles, examines how to overcome existing barriers, and presents a strategic plan for EV grid-integration.

Over several decades in Vermont, a concerted effort was made to shift home heating away from electricity to fuels including oil, propane, and to a lesser degree natural gas. Highly efficient heat pump technology offers an opportunity today to transition back to electricity as an energy source for home heating, and could save consumers money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Many industrialized countries are exploring ways to facilitate the prioritization of efforts targeting improved thermal efficiency in an aging building stock. Older buildings, typically, have inefficient building envelopes and higher energy-consumption patterns relative to new construction, which contributes to higher overall energy consumption at the local and regional scale. Reducing energy consumption by increasing the efficiency of older buildings will result in lower anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and help address the growing issues related to climate change. To address these concerns a GIS-based approach is developed to evaluate building-stock age in rural communities with limited access to historical parcel data. This approach involves georeferencing historical Sanborn insurance maps, digitizing building footprints for each year. This methodology is applied to a small town in rural Vermont and a map is produced depicting the spatiotemporal evolution of building construction over the years 1885–1940. 1091 structures built prior to 1941 are identified and it is argued that weatherization efforts should focus on the oldest buildings first and sequentially address younger structures, lowering both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the least-efficient building stock.

PEVs can represent a significant power resource for the grid. An IVCI with bi-direction V2G capabilities would allow PEVs to provide grid support services and thus generate a source of revenue for PEV owners. The fleet of EV Project vehicles represents a power resource between 30 MW and 90 MW, depending on the power rating of the grid connection (5-15 kW). Aggregation of vehicle capacity would allow PEVs to participate in wholesale reserve capacity markets. One of the key insights from EV Project data is the fact that vehicles are connected to an EVSE much longer than is necessary to deliver a full charge. During these hours when the vehicles are not charging, they can be participating in wholesale power markets providing the high-value services of regulation and spinning reserves. The annual gross revenue potential for providing these services using the fleet of EV Project vehicles is several hundred thousands of dollars to several million dollars annually depending on the power rating of the grid interface, the number of hours providing grid services, and the market being served. On a per vehicle basis, providing grid services can generate several thousands of dollars over the life of the vehicle.

AbstractThe electric car revolution is back in gear and ready to plug into the mass market.

The electric car revolution is back in gear and ready to plug into the mass market.

Photovoltaic (PV) technology has not been widely utilized as a source of energy for personal transportation. Several experimental projects have evaluated the use of PV integrated into parking structures to charge battery-powered, electric vehicles. Competitions featuring solar-powered vehicles have spawned futuristic looking vehicles propelled solely by electricity produced using vehicle integrated PV. This paper explores the use of vehicle integrated PV (VIPV) for a series hybrid vehicle configuration. Solar would serve as one of several fuel options available to the vehicle owner. This application represents a realistic, near-term possibility for the widespread use of PV as a source of energy for personal transportation.

This report contains five substantive sections describing plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) related research conducted over an 18-month period by faculty and graduate students at the University of Vermont. Funding for these separate but related projects was provided by the Transportation Research Center, electric utilities, and Vermont State Agency partners. Section 1.2 of this report presents a literature review of prior studies regarding the proportion of miles driven under gasoline and electric power respectively, the resulting gasoline displacement and net change in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with PHEV operation, the generating capacity available to charge PHEVs and vehicle lifetime ownership costs. Section 2 is an analysis of state and federal policies to enhance the economic competitiveness of PHEVs. Two models of the impact of electricity demand for PHEV charging are described in Sections 3 and 4. The first of these models looks at the impact of this additional electricity demand on carbon allowance prices and generating costs under an electricity sector only cap-and-trade program, while the second explores its impact on medium voltage distribution circuits. Section 5 estimates the economic potential for bidirectional interfacing between vehicles and the grid, a concept known as vehicle-to-grid or V2G, in Vermont.

The current electricity infrastructure in the United States relies on a centralized distribution network that carries a heavy carbon footprint and is susceptible to disruption and failure. Rural communities are more susceptible to longer term interruption and should strive towards a local distributed energy model. This transition will require municipalities to engage with and seek input from community stakeholders. This paper describes a possible model for supporting rural community energy projects using a Geographic Information System (GIS), which was used to develop an inventory of energy resource potential in a rural Vermont town for biomass, wind, and solar technologies.

The transportation sector is dangerously dependent on a single source of fuel—petroleum. The inevitable decline in global oil production in the face of rising demand requires shift toward alternative fuels to power the nation’s vehicle fleet. An emerging consensus among industry analysts and policymakers is forming around the central role that electric drive will play in future vehicle designs. Virtually every major automobile manufacturer has announced plans to produce and sell plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and/or electric vehicles (EV) in the next few years. This paper explores the role that solar photovoltaic technology could play providing a clean and sustainable source of fuel for PHEVs and EVs. The cost of solar energy to fuel vehicles is compared to gasoline; a variety of business models are described that allow solar energy to meet the demand for electricity from an emerging fleet of grid-connected electric drive vehicles. The analysis presented indicates that a tremendous market potential exists for solar PV serving as a cost-effective fuel for vehicles.

This research report specifically examines the CO2 and NOx emissions of switching a significant number of Vermont vehicles from gasoline to electricity. In addition to the environmental and social impacts, the reliance on petroleum to fuel Vermont vehicles impacts the state’s economy and the pocket-books of consumers. Drivers in Vermont spent more than $1.1 billion to fuel vehicles in 2007, an increase of about $500 million dollars from 2002. Changing the fuel in Vermont vehicles can address both emissions and economic issues. Advances in electric drive systems and energy storage devices have made plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) a reality. Building on the success of hybrid electric vehicles, PHEVs allow the consumer to charge the vehicle’s battery pack directly from the electric grid rather than from the vehicle’s gas engine. This research report looks at the ability of the Vermont electric grid to handle large numbers of PHEVs, and at the emissions impact and end-user economic costs.

As the vehicle fleet transitions to electric drive, a new market for photovoltaic (PV) technology emerges in vehicle integrated applications—VIPV. This paper explores the VIPV opportunity and reports on recent activity in this area. A brief overview of past efforts to utilize solar as a source of energy for transportation is presented. Specific design considerations are discusses, along with an assessment of current and emerging photovoltaic technologies and their use in VIPV application. And finally, commercial development efforts are described, along with an assessment of the future VIPV market opportunity. The paper concludes that electric drive vehicles offer an exciting opportunity to create a multi-MW market for photovoltaics, while at the same time offering a clean and renewable fuel source for light vehicles.

Thanks to new solar resource assessment techniques using cloud cover data available from geostationary satellites, it is apparent that grid-connected PV installations can serve to enhance electric grid reliability, preventing or hastening recovery from major power outages and serving to mitigate extreme price spikes in wholesale energy markets.

The use of batteries to provide storage for photovoltaic (PV) power has been evaluated in various contexts. In grid-connected applications, batteries can serve to provide firm peak-shaving for distributed PV installations. To date, however, the use of batteries from parked electric-drive vehicles (EDV) to provide buffer storage for PV capacity value has not been analyzed. The emerging vehicle to grid (V2G) concept suggests that battery-powered EDVs can provide power to the grid to serve various markets. This paper evaluates the use of battery-powered EDVs to provide buffer storage for grid-connected PV installations, assuming a V2G infrastructure. The approach could serve to provide capacity value for PV installations, thus enhancing their value as distributed, demand-side resources.

Electric-drive vehicles can become and important resource for the California electric utility system, with consequent air pollution, system reliability, and economic benefits. We refer to electric power resources from vehicles as “Vehicle to Grid” power (V2G). The economic value of some forms of V2G appear high, more than enough to offset the initially higher costs of electric-drive vehicles, thus having the potential to accelerate their introduction. To realize this potential, some coordination of vehicle and infrastructure planning will be needed. This study calculates three parameters of electric drive vehicles (EDVs) which are important for their use by the electric system: resources size, availability, and economic potential.

This paper investigates the role that renewable energy could play to promote economic and ecological sustainability in the Northern Forest region. The link between renewable energy development and land conservation has not been well established in the literature. This paper begins to establish this link. Several opportunities are identified in which renewable energy development could effectively address some of the key issues threatening the long-run sustainability of the Northern Forest region. The paper concludes that renewable energy development could enhance the value of forested land, thereby reducing the pressure on landowners to harvest timber unsustainably or to sell-off large tracts of land for development purposes. In addition, renewable energy development could provide an opportunity to strengthen and diversify the rural, resource-based economies of the region.