Electric vehicle energy storage wins award

Are electric vehicles a good option for the energy transition?

Our estimates are generally conservative and offer a lower bound of future opportunities. Renewable energy and electric vehicles will be required for the energy transition, but the global electric vehicle battery capacity available for grid storage is not constrained.

Does technical EV capacity meet grid storage capacity demand?

Technical vehicle-to-grid capacity or second-use capacity are each, on their own, sufficient to meet the short-term grid storage capacity demand of 3.4-19.2 TWh by 2050. This is also true on a regional basis where technical EV capacity meets regional grid storage capacity demand (see Supplementary Fig. 9).

Can EV batteries supply short-term storage facilities?

For higher vehicle utilisation, neglecting battery pack thermal management in the degradation model will generally result in worse battery lifetimes, leading to a conservative estimate of electric vehicle lifetime. As such our modelling suggests a conservative lower bound of the potential for EV batteries to supply short-term storage facilities.

When will EV batteries be retired?

Here, for model simplicity, we assume batteries will be retired only when EVs come into EoL. While for EV battery capacity, we use an average capacity of 33, 66, and 100 kWh for small/mid-size/large BEVs, and 21, 10, and 15 kWh for small/mid-size/large PHEVs.

How will EV batteries help the energy transition?

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative The energy transition will require a rapid deployment of renewable energy (RE) and electric vehicles (EVs) where other transit modes are unavailable. EV batteries could complement RE generation by providing short-term grid services.

Should EV batteries be used as stationary storage?

Low participation rates of 12%–43% are needed to provide short-term grid storage demand globally. Participation rates fall below 10% if half of EV batteries at end-of-vehicle-life are used as stationary storage. Short-term grid storage demand could be met as early as 2030 across most regions.