Quantifying electric vehicle battery degradation from driving vs. vehicle-to-grid services

The risk of accelerated electric vehicle battery degradation is commonly cited as a concern inhibiting the implementation of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. However, little quantitative evidence exists in prior literature to refute or substantiate these concerns for different grid services that vehicles may offer. In this paper, a methodology is proposed to quantify electric vehicle (EV) battery degradation from driving only vs. driving and several vehicle-grid services, based on a semi-empirical lithium-ion battery capacity fade model. A detailed EV battery pack thermal model and EV powertrain model are utilized to capture the time-varying battery temperature and working parameters including current, internal resistance and state-of-charge (SOC), while an EV is driving and offering various grid services. We use the proposed method to simulate the battery degradation impacts from multiple vehicle-grid services including peak load shaving, frequency regulation and net load shaping. The degradation impact of these grid services is compared against baseline cases for driving and uncontrolled charging only, for several different cases of vehicle itineraries, driving distances, and climate conditions. Over the lifetime of a vehicle, our results show that battery wear is indeed increased when vehicles offer V2G grid services. However, the increased wear from V2G is inconsequential compared with naturally occurring battery wear (i.e. from driving and calendar ageing) when V2G services are offered only on days of the greatest grid need (20 days/year in our study). In the case of frequency regulation and peak load shaving V2G grid services offered 2 hours each day, battery wear remains minimal even if this grid service is offered every day over the vehicle lifetime. Our results suggest that an attractive tradeoff exists where vehicles can offer grid services on the highest value days for the grid with minimal impact on vehicle battery life.