Integrating Plug-in Electric Vehicles into California’s Grid System: Policy Entrepreneurship and Technical Challenges

The deployment of large numbers of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), in order to satisfy zero-emission-vehicle (ZEV) goals in the State of California, brings both potential benefits and costs for the electric grid. Since early 2009, the issue of so-called vehicle-grid integration (VGI) has become a center-stage policy discussion among the electricity and transportation sectors. This dissertation encompasses three studies related to VGI. By conducting a policy process analysis, the first study addresses the questions of how the policy process for VGI regulations has been formed in California, and what have been the major challenges in policy-making. The results show that a policy window for VGI was opened for the first time by the political stream, through State Senate Bill 626 in 2009, and later, supported by the Governor’s ZEV action plan in 2012. These legislations gave California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) the authority to implement regulations on enabling PEV load management systems and PEV-based grid services. In response, Energy Division Staff at CPUC became a policy entrepreneur, and has adopted an incremental policy-making strategy targeting investor-owned utilities (IOUs). The two largest barriers facing an effective policy solution are identified as; (1) the complexities involved in quantifying economic value from VGI; and (2) the feasibility concerns about adopting VGI enabling technologies on the grid. The second study focuses on the VGI feasibility issues mentioned above. This study provides a feasibility assessment, focusing on technical and market challenges in VGI. The results show that both, technical and market challenges exist in each of the load management strategies. The findings feature a list of technical and market challenges that need to be taken into consideration by stakeholders in VGI-related decision-making. Finally, the third study develops a stochastic-systems approach to VGI modeling where PEV load management strategies are compared for their economic value to PEV consumers and their local utility companies. The proposed methodology provides several improvements to the VGI modeling literature. These improvements include combining assessments for generation and distribution systems in the same model, and advancing uncertainty analysis for PEV consumer behavior considering real-world data sets.