Quantitative evidence for modelling electric vehicles - Supplementary Data

Please cite as:

Malte Jansen, Rob Gross, and Iain Staffell. ‘Quantitative Evidence for Modelling Electric Vehicles’. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 199 (1 July 2024): 114524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2024.114524.

Abstract:

Electric vehicles are now a major contributor to decarbonising the transport sector. Their rollout has accelerated rapidly since 2020, reaching a global fleet of 40 million in 2023. This  presents both problems and opportunities for electricity systems, with charging increasing peak loads, but also providing a large new source of flexibility to help manage increased shares of wind and solar generation, shift peak demand and improve network management.

While EV flexibility is widely discussed, there is uncertainty surrounding the magnitude to which EVs could help electricity systems, and a distinct lack of quantitative evidence around adoption, charging behaviour and technical capabilities for load shifting. This study employs the rapid evidence assessment method to synthesise recent information. We find that studies expect that EVs could provide 1–11 GW of flexible capacity per million vehicles (median: 3.7 GW), with the ability to shift demand by 1.5–5 hours (median: 4 hours) and a price elasticity of –0.77 to –0.10 (median: –0.15).  Diurnal profiles of charging demand and availability for providing flexibility are aggregated across multiple studies. The results are relevant for energy modellers and show that the interaction between EVs and electricity systems can be generalised on a widely-applicable basis.