PNNL

Abstract

Climate change exacerbates power outage events that pose risks to local economies and communities. Severe power outages can even endanger citizens’ lives. An electric vehicle (EV) equipped with bidirectional energy exchange capability and vehicle-to-home (V2H) technology, can serve as a battery resource, and provide backup power to meet residential energy needs during a power outage, thereby curbing health hazards. We simulate the electric V2H system in nine US climate regions, over four seasons, and during short-term, long-term, and extremely severe power outage events. We propose resilience metrics to evaluate household energy resilience, which measures the duration of time that EVs can serve the household energy needs during power outages, and mobility resilience, which represents the remaining driving range of EVs after the outage. Our findings indicate that contemporary EV models, even when their state of charge is 50%, can meet residential energy needs during a 12-hour outage in mild seasons (i.e., spring and autumn), except for communities in the Central, West North Central, and East North Central regions due to lower temperatures and higher household energy needs. The resilience of the household energy system during long-term outages is affected by the start time of the outage, heating and cooling power requirements, and daily travel needs. During extremely severe power outages, EVs can protect residents from cold stress over multiple days. Our methods and results inform research and practice on smart management of the integrated residential and EV energy system and propose measures for mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events.