Advanced Vehicle Technologies Critical to Mitigate Freight Electrification Demands on the Grid

Electrification of passenger and freight vehicles offers unique transportation decarbonization opportunities. Under successful large scale adoption scenarios, the resultant increased power demand and the need for the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) network to adapt to fleet operations could impact the electric grid in the next 25+ years.

Multiple long-term freight electrification scenarios were considered for the Atlanta-Knoxville-Chattanooga region under two electrification market penetrations, each with different vehicle technologies (business as usual and aggressive improvement). While transportation electrification is not expected to significantly impact the grid in the near future, long term transportation decarbonization success will likely require coordinated grid planning:

• In the high electrification scenario (7% of heavy duty, 26% of medium duty and 57% of light duty vehicles are BEV), over 40% of the grid nodes would expect more than 50% increase in electricity demand.
• In the bounding scenario (100% battery electric vehicles), over 70% of the grid nodes would expect more than 50% increase in demand, including multiple nodes with demands increasing by more than 125%.

Advanced vehicle technologies such as light weighting, aerodynamics, low rolling resistance tires or improved batteries as well as connectivity and automation could reduce the overall grid demand from transportation by up to 30%.

High Electrification Scenario	Bounding Electrification Scenario

To ensure long-term transportation decarbonization success, it is important to understand the spatial and temporal impacts and specificities of personally owned vehicles as well as fleets. Due to the unique medium and heavy duty truck behavior and charging requirements, utilities and fleet operators will need to work together to assess potential grid impacts and to plan improvements as transportation electrification progresses.

Note: The study focused on estimating the capacity increase at each node based on current operations and did not consider any charge management approaches. The study was funded in 2022 by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) Analysis.

Zuniga-Garcia N.; Freyermuth V.; Stinson M.; Sahin O., Impacts of Freight Fleet Electrification, 2023 IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech), 19-22 April 2023, Portland, OR, . doi: 10.1109/SusTech57309.2023.10129590