Transportation Electrification Load Development For a Renewable Future Analysis

Abstract

Electrification of the transportation sector offers the opportunity to significantly reduce petroleum consumption. The transportation sector accounts for 70% of US petroleum consumption. The transition to electricity as a transportation fuel will create a new load for electricity generation. In support of a recent US Department of Energy funded activity that analyzed a future generation scenario with high renewable energy technology contributions, a set of regional hourly load profiles for electrified vehicles were developed for the 2010 to 2050 timeframe. These load profiles with their underlying assumptions will be presented in this paper. The transportation electrical energy was determined using regional population forecast data, historical vehicle per capita data, and market penetration growth functions to determine the number of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in each analysis region. Two market saturation scenarios of 30% of sales and 50% of sales of PEVs consuming on average {approx}6 kWh per day were considered. Results were generated for 3109 counties and were consolidated to 134 Power Control Areas (PCA) for the use NREL's's regional generation planning analysis tool ReEDS. PEV aggregate load profiles from previous work were combined with vehicle population data to generate hourly loads on a regional basis. A transition from consumer-controlled charging toward utility-controlled charging was assumed such that by 2050 approximately 45% of the transportation energy demands could be delivered across 4 daily time slices under optimal control from the utility perspective. No other literature has addressed the potential flexibility in energy delivery to electric vehicles in connection with a regional power generation study. This electrified transportation analysis resulted in an estimate for both the flexible load and fixed load shapes on a regional basis that may evolve under two PEV market penetration scenarios. EVS25 Copyright.