Reports and Resources
Impacts of Electric Vehicles on the Grid: The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Electricity released a report to Congress examining the implications that electric vehicle (EV) charging will have on the grid, as well as considerations for managing and integrating that load. EVs and the grid can have a symbiotic relationship, since EVs have flexibility in terms of where and how long they use energy to charge. They may sit idle for long periods of time and energy stored in their batteries can be used for non-transportation applications. Meeting growing energy demand from EV charging will require investments in infrastructure and approaches that take advantage of demand and supply flexibility. Proactive planning that incorporates a portfolio of options including infrastructure upgrades, mitigative load management approaches, and programs that welcome consumers as active participants can balance the growing need for electricity while maintaining grid reliability and affordable charging.
New Report Evaluates EV Standards for Grid Integration: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory released a report that examines a selection of standards associated with vehicle grid integration. The standards are evaluated on their support for EVs to provide/participate in component distributed energy resource grid services. Grid services are the ability of a device on the power system to help meet an operational objective of the power system. This could be the capability to shift power consumption to a later time (e.g., peak load shaving) or even adjusting the power consumption to help maintain the stability of the grid (e.g., frequency regulation). The report also discusses the challenges associated with the deployments of the standards.
The Future of Vehicle Grid Integration: Harnessing the Flexibility of EV Charging: illustrates the characteristics of a future where vehicles are successfully integrated with the power grid. This vehicle grid integration vision document is intended to serve as a guidepost to help stakeholders prioritize and target action as they face competing priorities and balance tradeoffs based on the needs of their local communities.
EV Retail Rate Design 101, July 2022: This technical brief introduces and describes electric vehicle (EV) retail rate design, including motivations, metering configurations, cost recovery approaches, energy and demand charges (e.g., time-differentiated rate designs, locational-differentiated rate designs), charging controls, interactive grid services, and load flexibility. The brief synthesizes recent experience and identifies resources that provide more details and information.
Design Recommendations for Accessible Electric Vehicle Charging Stations, July 2022: The U.S. Access Board released the technical assistance document to aid in the development of a national network of EV charging stations that is accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. The document reviews existing requirements and new recommendations for making EV charging stations accessible. The document can assist individuals involved in the planning, designing, building, installing, and use of EV charging stations, including state and local governments, designers and developers, electrical and construction professionals, equipment manufacturers, automakers, utility providers, charge point operators and e-mobility service providers, EV owners, and people with disabilities.
Planning Considerations for Electric Vehicles – State Specific Reports: The Office of Electricity (OE) prepared these reports as part of the EVGrid Assist effort to assist decision makers as they construct plans, evaluate opportunities, and weigh alternatives. The reports introduce high-level concepts that are important for planning, emphasize grid considerations, and demonstrate two DOE-funded self-service analysis tools that can be accessed free of charge. The reports can be used to understand the value of the two tools in the planning process and can serve as a starting point for conversations. Results presented are only to demonstrate the tools and are not suggested solutions. Each decision maker or participant in the process will apply criteria that are important to them, their state, and their constituents.
Use the following map to download your state’s report:
A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) webinar about the state specific reports is also available to view online.
Voices of Experience initiative: The report compiles ideas, advice, and approaches from various stakeholder perspectives about EVs. The topics include residential charging, long-haul transportation, public transit, infrastructure deployment, regulatory policy, and new market entrants.
The report also includes a broader, more informal collection of experiences and observations and explores successful approaches, as well as not-so-successful ones, to uncover unanticipated challenges or barriers.
Joint Office of Energy and Transportation Technical Assistance: The Technical Assistance webpage provides resources and tools to help decision makers plan and implement their state's network of electric vehicle chargers and fueling infrastructure, as well as battery electric and fuel cell battery transit and school buses.
Survey and gap prioritization of U.S. electric vehicle charge management deployments: This study surveys and characterizes the scope of current technical and programmatic knowledge pertaining to EV charge management technologies and practices in the U.S. and relevant international jurisdictions. This characterization of existing field demonstrations and associated knowledge derived were used to determine gaps in the charge management demonstration landscape. Addressing these gaps through research and demonstration could increase confidence in the United States that load management and EV charge control could achieve overarching societal benefits.
Integrated Distribution System Planning (IDSP) Resources: An IDSP process provides a decision framework for developing holistic infrastructure investment strategies for local electricity grids. OE is advancing IDSP through guidance documents, best practices, and training for state officials and utilities. It also provides technical assistance to state energy officials and utility regulators and to improve upon the IDSP practices.
NARUC Center for Partnerships & Innovation - Electric Vehicles: NARUC, with support from DOE, is working to explore the challenges around EV charging and load growth with its members and experts through resources, reports, and an Electric Vehicles State Working Group, which is open to all NARUC members and holds monthly meetings on EV regulatory topics.
EVs@Scale Lab Consortium: DOE's EVs@Scale Lab Consortium brings together national laboratories and key stakeholders to conduct infrastructure research and development to address challenges and barriers for high-power EV charging infrastructure that enable greater safety, grid operation reliability, and consumer confidence. Visit the website for research information, publications, and engagement opportunities.
Strategy for Achieving a Beneficial Vehicle Grid Integration (VGI) Future: Building on the vision described in The Future of Vehicle Grid Integration: Harnessing the Flexibility of EV Charging, DOE's Strategy for Achieving a Beneficial Vehicle Grid Integration (VGI) Future details how DOE will support stakeholders in achieving a future where electric vehicles (EVs) are safely, securely, and reliably connected with the electric grid. DOE will accomplish this through 3 mutually supporting strategies: 1) validating repeatable, extensible VGI solutions, 2) supporting VGI institutional decision-making, and 3) spurring VGI innovation.
Vehicle Grid Integration Assessment Report: The VGI Assessment Study details a 10-year roadmap for DOE's vehicle grid integration (VGI) work. Within this workplan, DOE will conduct research on specific aspects of VGI covering impacts on EVs and the grid, grid services, codes and standards, and cybersecurity for this report. This roadmap was developed as the result of work performed and conducted across the DOE complex, consultations with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), review of reports and studies by non-DOE researchers and VGI stakeholders, and input received directly from stakeholders.
Tools
Geospatial Energy Mapper (GEM): This free online tool uses an extensive map library that can help identify potential locations for EV charging stations based on user-specified priorities. The tool can help identify gaps in corridors and where access to charging is limited. The library includes mapping layers such as Electrical Substations, HUD Opportunity Zones, and Designated Alternative Fuels Corridor. It also includes data such as percent low-income, percent minority, household transportation affordability, multifamily housing density, and manufactured housing density that can be included in the EV analysis or any of the other models in the system.
REVISE: This nationwide modeling tool from Oak Ridge National Laboratory helps infrastructure planners decide where and when to locate EV charging stations along interstate highways to encourage the adoption of EVs for cross-country travel. The free open-source software, called REVISE-II, considers EV growth forecasts, charging technology capabilities, intercity travel trends, and driver demographics to help planners fill infrastructure gaps for charging facilities. By inputting various assumptions, planners can generate scenarios for future charging infrastructure requirements to encourage acceptance of EVs and accommodate growth as more EVs are adopted.
GridLAB-D: This tool enables modeling from the electrical grid substation all the way down to an individual device within a home. Researchers and utilities have used this detailed modeling capability to examine and evaluate distribution automation technologies, demand response markets, feeder reconfiguration strategies, and both the feeder-level and localized impacts of technologies like Distributed Energy Resources (rooftop solar and local energy storage), energy efficient appliance deployment, and EV adoption. These analyses have ranged from evaluating feeder electrical characteristics (feeder power or individual location voltages) to impacts to customer billing, across both short-term (seconds) and long-term (annual to multi-year) time horizons. GridLAB-D™ is considered an expert-level tool that requires national lab support.
Caldera: Caldera is an EV charging infrastructure simulation platform designed to inform the complex, future-looking decision making required today to enable the electrified transportation of tomorrow. By representing EV charging with individual vehicle and infrastructure agents and high-fidelity charging profiles, it is possible to forecast potential electrical loads with great precision based on transportation and proposed infrastructure inputs. The suite of tools includes Caldera Charge for EV charging load forecasting, Caldera Operate for mitigating EV charging load with battery storage, and Caldera Plan for resource constrained, incremental infrastructure deployment.
Caldera is currently a research tool that requires a license and some introduction from our researchers.
EVI-X Modeling Suite of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Analysis Tools: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has a suite of expert-assisted EV Grid Integration software: the EVI-X Modeling Suite of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Analysis Tools. NREL’s modeling suite informs the development of large-scale EV charging infrastructure deployments from the regional, state, and national levels to site and facility operations. In addition to identifying the number and type of chargers needed to meet a given demand, the tools enable researchers to pinpoint efficient charging station locations and find ways to mitigate the impact of charging loads on the electric grid by tapping into renewable energy and employing smart-charge technologies. Specialized modules that may be of interest include: EVI-Pro Lite for projecting consumer demand for EV charging infrastructure; EVI-EnSite to optimize site location; EVI-Fast (Financial Analysis Scenario), which estimates break-even prices to charge EVs based on input parameters such as installation costs, operation maintenance, usage, grid-infrastructure upgrades; EVI-RoadTrip, which analyzes charging infrastructure for long-distance travel; and EVI-Equity, which analyzes the accessibility of charging infrastructure.
Dsgrid: Demand-Side Grid Model: NREL's demand-side grid (dsgrid) model harnesses decades of sector-specific energy modeling expertise to understand current and future U.S. electricity load for power systems analyses. The primary purpose of dsgrid is to create comprehensive electricity load data sets at high temporal, geographic, sectoral, and end-use resolution. These data sets enable detailed analyses of current patterns and future projections of end-use loads.
JOBS (registration required): Argonne National Laboratory’s JOBS models evaluate how installing infrastructure for existing and emerging fuels (e.g., EV charging stations, natural gas, and hydrogen) affects jobs, earnings, ripple-effect spending, and gross economic output in an economy. Expenditures for fueling infrastructure are translated into dollar flows among industries, with impacts analyzed according to location and deployment level. JOBS tools enable scenarios at national, regional, and state scales. Within the spreadsheet tools, users define scenarios to estimate economic impacts for individual states, regions, or the United States as a whole. The tools contain default input values, but users can override default data with their own data for more project-specific results. Each tool contains user instructions.
Utility Finder (U-Finder): This tool helps states, communities, and fleets identify active local utility partners supporting the installation of EV chargers, also called electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). Primary U-Finder outputs include the utilities operating in the state or local geography, utility contacts, and incentives offered by those utilities.
