Data-Driven Assessment of Vehicle-to-Grid Capabilities in Supporting Grid During Emergencies: Case Study of Travis County, TX

TL;DR

This study evaluates how vehicle-to-grid technology can support power grid resilience during emergencies by analyzing real-world data and modeling scenarios in Travis County, Texas, highlighting the potential of EVs as distributed energy resources.

Contribution

It provides a data-driven assessment of V2G capabilities in emergency support, integrating survey, outage, and demographic data into realistic grid simulations.

Findings

V2G can significantly reduce involuntary load shedding during emergencies.

Increased EV ownership enhances V2G's emergency support potential.

Bidirectional charging availability is crucial for effective V2G deployment.

Abstract

As extreme weather events become more common and threaten power grids, the continuing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) introduces a growing opportunity for their use as a distributed energy storage resource. This energy storage can be used as backup generation through the use of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, where electricity is sent back from EV batteries to the grid. With enough participation from EV owners, V2G can mitigate outages during grid emergencies. In order to investigate a practical application of V2G, this study leverages a vast array of real-world data, such as survey results on V2G participation willingness, historical outage data within ERCOT, current EV registrations, and demographic data. This data informs realistic emergency grid scenarios with V2G support using a synthetic transmission grid for Travis County. The results find that as EV ownership rises in the coming years, the simultaneous facilitation of bidirectional charging availability would allow for V2G to play a substantial role in preventing involuntary load shed as a result of emergencies like winter storms.