Institute of Transportation Studies Friday Seminar: Clean Transportation as the path to a Clean Grid

Vehicles account for nearly 23% of global energy consumption, and global GHG emissions from vehicles will increase significantly by 2050. Transportation electrification is needed soon and at significant scale to meet climate targets and through the deployment of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) a unique opportunity exists to transform two major energy sectors: transportation and the grid. If 25% of light-duty vehicles in the U.S. were plug-in hybrids, nearly 1,000 GWh of grid storage would be available – an unprecedented scale. This grid storage can enable integration of substantial amounts of renewable generation and in this manner, clean
transportation becomes the enabler for a clean grid. Realizing this vision requires solutions to two major challenges: First, deployment of PEVs must accelerate substantially. Second, technical solutions are needed to enable vehicles to predictably and reliably offer grid services without interfering with the travel needs of drivers. This seminar will introduce activities in the vehicle powertrain research program at Berkeley Lab that are leveraging big data, and high-fidelity physics-based models of vehicles and grid interactions to develop solutions for these challenges.

Speaker: Samveg Saxena, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs