Role of the electric vehicle as a distributed resource

The growing concern about environmental degradation, and increasing amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles have generated significant interests among citizens, auto manufacturers and governments around the world to develop affordable and workable electric vehicles. Both fuel cell and electric battery operated vehicles are being considered for commercial deployment within the next five years. The availability of such technologies will offer new opportunities for distributed energy sources for partially meeting household electricity demand. The unique concept presented in this paper deals with using the electric vehicle (EV) as a home-based power plant supplying electricity during hours of high price, and under emergency situations. Such dual-use opportunity for the EV will allow the EV owner to get financial benefits that can be used for servicing the car/battery lease expenses. This paper deals with modeling the available capacity for stationary electricity output (while the vehicle is not on the road), the proper charging sequence, forecasting the load servicing capability of the EV battery or the fuel cell, and the system level load impact when the batteries are charged. The load servicing capability of the dual-purpose EV (DPEV) will determine the type of loads and duration of supply that can be provided by the on-board power plant.