Energy Justice Implication of Large-scale Electric Vehicle Adoption

Abstract

Electric vehicle (EV) sales have been growing exponentially, and the potential energy costs to support them are reflected on the bill of numerous households. Many studies address the effectiveness of incentives for large-scale EV adoption. However, the consequences of such an event, specifically the energy burden of supporting it, are not fully explored. The energy requirements of increased EV adoption will put upward pressure on wholesale prices, which collaborators at ISO-NE have forecasted using an industry-standard wholesale market simulator. Our goal is to find the effect of such changes in wholesale prices on the retail rate charged to consumers. To do so, we must determine which factors influence the retail rate, and whether the wholesale rate is a big factor. In this study, we have synthesized consensus from existing literature to a standardized retail rate accounting method. Using this method on historical data, we first verify the credibility of the method, then calculate the percentages that purchased power from the wholesale market contributes to the retail rate in various utilities. Overall, we found that large-scale EV adoption will have a high energy burden on consumers, which underscores the need for new policies to fairly distribute electricity costs.