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Title: Willingness to delay charging of electric vehicles
Electrification of vehicles is becoming one of the main avenues for decarbonization of the transportation market. To reduce stress on the energy grid, large-scale charging will require optimal scheduling of when electricity is delivered to vehicles. Coordinated electric-vehicle charging can produce optimal, flattened loads that would improve reliability of the power system as well as reduce system costs and emissions. However, a challenge for successful introduction of coordinated deadline-scheduling of residential charging comes from the demand side: customers would need to be willing both to defer charging their vehicles and to accept less than a 100% target for battery charge. Within a coordinated electric-vehicle charging pilot run by the local utility in upstate New York, this study analyzes the necessary incentives for customers to accept giving up control of when charging of their vehicles takes place. Using data from a choice experiment implemented in an online survey of electric-vehicle owners and lessees in upstate New York (N=462), we make inference on the willingness to pay for features of hypothetical coordinated electric-vehicle charging programs. To address unobserved preference heterogeneity, we apply Variational Bayes (VB) inference to a mixed logit model. Stochastic variational inference has recently emerged as a fast and computationally-efficient more » alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for scalable Bayesian estimation of discrete choice models. Our results show that individuals negatively perceive the duration of the timeframe in which the energy provider would be allowed to defer charging, even though both the desired target for battery charge and deadline would be respected. This negative monetary valuation is evidenced by an expected average reduction in the annual fee of joining the charging program of $2.64 per hour of control yielded to the energy provider. Our results also provide evidence of substantial heterogeneity in preferences. For example, the 25% quantile of the posterior distribution of the mean of the willingness to accept an additional hour of control yielded to the utility is $5.16. However, the negative valuation of the timeframe for deferring charging is compensated by positive valuation of emission savings coming from switching charging to periods of the day with a higher proportion of generation from renewable sources. Customers also positively valued discounts in the price of energy delivery. « less
Authors:
Award ID(s):
1632124
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10209596
Journal Name:
25th Annual Conference of the European Association Environmental and Resource Economists
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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