A cross-scale framework for evaluating flexibility values of battery and fuel cell electric vehicles

Ruixue Liu; Guannan He; Xizhe Wang; Dharik Mallapragada; Hongbo Zhao; Yang Shao-Horn; Benben Jiang

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-43884-x

A cross-scale framework for evaluating flexibility values of battery and fuel cell electric vehicles

Nat Commun. 2024 Jan 4;15(1):280. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43884-x.

Authors

Ruixue Liu^#¹, Guannan He^#^{2

3

4

5}, Xizhe Wang¹, Dharik Mallapragada⁶, Hongbo Zhao⁷, Yang Shao-Horn^{8

9

10

11}, Benben Jiang¹²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Automation, Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
² Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China. gnhe@pku.edu.cn.
³ National Engineering Laboratory for Big Data Analysis and Applications, Peking University, Beijing, China. gnhe@pku.edu.cn.
⁴ Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Peking University, Beijing, China. gnhe@pku.edu.cn.
⁵ Peking University Changsha Institute for Computing and Digital Economy, Beijing, China. gnhe@pku.edu.cn.
⁶ MIT Energy Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁷ Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
⁸ MIT Energy Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA. shaohorn@mit.edu.
⁹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA. shaohorn@mit.edu.
¹⁰ Research Lab of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA. shaohorn@mit.edu.
¹¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA. shaohorn@mit.edu.
¹² Department of Automation, Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. bbjiang@tsinghua.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Flexibility has become increasingly important considering the intermittency of variable renewable energy in low-carbon energy systems. Electrified transportation exhibits great potential to provide flexibility. This article analyzed and compared the flexibility values of battery electric vehicles and fuel cell electric vehicles for planning and operating interdependent electricity and hydrogen supply chains while considering battery degradation costs. A cross-scale framework involving both macro-level and micro-level models was proposed to compute the profits of flexible EV refueling/charging with battery degradation considered. Here we show that the flexibility reduction after considering battery degradation is quantified by at least 4.7% of the minimum system cost and enlarged under fast charging and low-temperature scenarios. Our findings imply that energy policies and relevant management technologies are crucial to shaping the comparative flexibility advantage of the two transportation electrification pathways. The proposed cross-scale methodology has broad implications for the assessment of emerging energy technologies with complex dynamics.

Abstract

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