Figure 2 illustrates the score of each element in all levels calculated through the mean score of all the experts. In the perspective level, the Likelihood of Owner Participation tends to be the most important, which can also potentially influence decision making. This perspective is important because the power of owner participation can persuade them to participate in the program. This perspective is influenced by two criterions, which includes the highest impactable criterion—incentives and benefits for owners to participate in a bi-directional grid support program. Therefore, to make the best decision with regard to the objective, the critical, important perspective and criteria need to be first considered carefully.
Figure 2.The model with HDM results in all levels.
Considering relevant application alternatives, the Individual Owned Vehicles alternative, for example, electric vehicles in the United States, has the highest score based on many contributions. Such a huge market adoption and technology readiness factor could make this alternative become the first option for this opportunity to become the objective. Moreover, the direct power a vehicle owner could introduce to the program through incentives and benefits could potentially be key to making this the best option.
The School Bus Fleets is the second option because buses have large stored potential energy and significant downtime during the summer’s peak, which highly contributes to all the three criteria in the Availability perspective. This can be the best option to support the peak V2G program; however, there is a barrier—the cost to transform these buses into electric models. Therefore, the lack of market adoption has a huge impact on this alternative.
The remaining three options— Municipal (Non-Bus and Non-Emergency), Military and Garbage Truck Fleets—have similar scores. They have immediate market availability and market adoption, which give them opportunities to participate in the program. These options could help the program to manage the energy consumption time. However, it also depends on their availability, readiness and market adoption factor with regard to the V2G integration. Nevertheless, the Garbage Truck Fleets has the lowest score because of the transformation cost to electric models in the first period of time, which is related to the market adoption and incentive/benefit of the owner criterion.
Conclusion
This paper analyzed the most opportune behind-the-meter transportation technologies and products to use for future summer peak V2G programs in California, Oregon and/or Washington. All five options have potential as V2G technologies but are in varying degrees of readiness. Through this research, the perspective of the Likelihood of Owner Participation was the most influential to the decision-making process. Within this perspective, the incentives/benefits for owner criterion was weighted most highly. Readiness Status, the second-highest weighted perspective, had market adoption as its highest-ranking criterion. The third perspective, Availability, had a fair equal distribution among its three criteria.
Of the five technological options, individually owned vehicles were chosen by all the experts to be the closest in delivering V2G integration capabilities. While there are still many hurdles and challenges for this technology type, the direct power and decent adoption rate of EVs in the United States indicate great promise. Research should be undertaken to examine how federal or state policy might stimulate this technology option through incentivization schemes, either in the form of government subsidies to consumers or VGI services, or regulatory prioritization.
Because school buses are common in almost every locality of the United States and that they are already often on a structured time schedule, they came in as the second-highest rated policy option. Here, the main hurdle would be the high purchase cost of electric buses and/or converting buses from fossil fuel to electric usage. More research should be conducted to understand how policy can incentivize school districts and municipal decision-makers to invest in EV technology. Incentivization schemes like subsidization might be one way to do so, as might federal or state grants.
Municipal owned vehicles scored about average, due to their lack of widespread adoption. However, because these vehicles do not require coercion or incentive to participate in scheduling for peak-management, this option may have more potential as time progresses and the costs of EVs decrease. This is largely true for all of the options, but more so for electric military vehicles and garbage trucks. Once costs decrease in these areas, decision makers might want to start integrating into EV technology.
All five technology options present great promise for the future of V2G and VGI technologies. Now that research has narrowed down policy options, future research will want to focus on incentivizing individual car owners and municipal decision makers to adopt these technologies. Future research should also analyze summer time peak management scheduling for a variety of municipal and government owned EVs.
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