CAREER: CAS-Climate: Urban Transportation-Energy Nexus: Environmentally Sustainable Transportation Systems with Bidirectional Energy Exchange

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Bidirectional electric vehicle (EV) and infrastructure technologies enable EVs to serve as mobile energy storage resources, provide services to buildings, and enhance resilience of urban energy systems during power outages. Toward enabling electric vehicle-to-everything (V2X) power solutions, this project will develop methods for holistic transportation, residential, and other commercial energy use management to enhance urban environmental sustainability. The research plan will advance systems science at the transportation-energy nexus by (1) creating coupled electric vehicle and residential/office energy use profiles that capture alternative management objectives and EV drivers preferences, (2) developing EV one-way and bidirectional infrastructure location decision-making models that center on distributive equity, and (3) modeling of EVs as distributed resources and assessing their services during power outages that are exacerbated by climate change. This research envisions urban electrified transportation systems with management of bidirectional energy exchanges and infrastructure deployment for urban environmental sustainability, equity, and resilience. The integrated education and policy outreach plans include (1) providing research opportunities in energy data analytics and applied optimization to diverse undergraduate students, (2) organizing a Midwest Sustainable Transportation Datathon, and (3) communicating the research methods and outcomes to policymakers and practitioners through an EV Steering Committee that enables research-practice feedback loops. The research approach includes data fusion and curation for the creation of a new dataset coupling US travel patterns and residential energy use characteristics as well as benchmarking bidirectional power profiles under various EV management objectives and preferences such as cost minimization, pro-environmental attitudes, valley filling and peak saving. Optimization models and solution algorithms will be developed for one-way and bidirectional EV charging infrastructure location modeling, integrating distributive equity objectives for ubiquitous EV infrastructure and sustainable mobility access. Consideration of the bidirectional EVs services provided during power outages will include the development of new resilience metrics for the coupled EV and residential energy use systems, at both the residential household and the community scales. Results from the project are targeted to provide EV infrastructure providers, utilities, and policymakers the engineering means to model and manage bidirectional EV energy exchanges based on environmental sustainability, equity, and resilience objectives. A policy outreach program with media resources on electric vehicle-to-everything demand, infrastructure deployment and management will be developed. Research insights will be distributed to a group of 50 stakeholders via the EV Steering Committee. The project will engage a diverse group of undergraduate and graduate research assistants at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the transportation and energy fields, offering a multidisciplinary STEM research experience. The integrated education plan involves organizing a Datathon that mobilizes an ecosystem of academics, national laboratory researchers, and public agencies to come together and provide data-driven tools for educating the workforce of the future. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.