Smart charging won’t increase electric vehicle adoption, says study

A new study by Professor Jonn Axsen of SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management reveals that smart charging – a potential tactic for increasing e-vehicle consumer adoption – isn’t likely to fuel sales.
“There are a lot of theories about how great smart charging, or vehicle-to-grid integration, might be,” says Axsen, “but after examining the literature we found the models weren’t representing actual human behaviour.”
The study, published last month in Nature, examined consumer behaviour related to smart charging—in which consumers recharge their electric vehicles in a way that supports renewable electricity, such as using wind- or solar-power suppliers. The effect would be to reap cost-savings for recharging when the supply is available—for example, when the wind blows.
Axsen, together with researchers Michael Wolinetz and Jotham Peters of Navius Consulting and Professor Curran Crawford from the University of Victoria, used data gleaned from a representative survey of 1,700 electric-vehicle-buying households across Canada.
“It was a very in-depth survey, with people completing three parts over several weeks, providing background on their vehicles and keeping a travel diary to collect their driving information,” says Axsen. “There were also choice exercises in which people told us whether they would buy electric vehicles and enroll in a smart-charging program under different conditions.”
The researchers then statistically analyzed this data to develop several models representing consumer purchasing decisions, their willingness to enroll in a smart-charging program, and whether the savings for power suppliers and consumers would be worthwhile. To provide a comparison, they simulated the impacts on electricity grids in B.C. and Alberta.
The results were surprising. It turns out smart charging isn’t the game changer that pundits had predicted it might be.
Cost savings from smart charging amounted to between a one-half and one-per-cent-cut in overall energy prices—or about $50 to $100 per electric vehicle each year.
“The true novelty of this study,” says Axsen, “is that once you talk to real people, you discover that vehicle-to-grid integration is helpful but it won’t save the day in terms of reducing transition costs. Smart charging is not likely to increase electric vehicle adoption.”
The study was funded by Natural Resources Canada, the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, the Government of British Columbia, BC Hydro and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Seems to me most folks in Canada presently don’t actually have the ability to reap the rewards of “smart” charging as they tend to be on volumetric meters rather than hourly smart meters. For example BC Hydro consumers have a stepped rate based on volume.

    When the wind blows typically in an electricity market, marginal cost is low and so is the hourly price. In Ontario except for the Global Adjustment there are times when the market is paying consumers to actually take power!

    How did the study control for the consumers inability to take advantage of the hourly price?

  2. Smart charging is a vague term with different interpretations. In Ontario where we have off peak electricity rates, Smart Charging tends to refer to the use of a networked charging station. A networked charge station can indicate to the EV driver through a mobile app if the station is operating ok/ in use or malfunctioning.

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