Brian Dean Johnston M.S. final exam and defense
Tuesday, July 3, 2012, 10:00 AM
Mechanical Engineering Conference Room

Title: "The Viability of Vehicle to Grid (V2G) Interaction for the Department of Defense"

Advisor: Thomas Bradley, Ph.D.

Committee: Anthony Maciejewski, Ph.D., Peter Young, Ph.D.

Abstract

The Department of Defense, through a combination of mandated executive orders and voluntary energy saving goals has direction to achieve improvements in energy self-sufficiency onboard its major domestic bases. Two primary areas of interest are expanding use of co-located renewable energy production and the capability to operate at some level of capacity completely independent of commercial utility providers in an “islanded” microgrid condition. Reduced environmental impact and enhanced energy security are a direct result of these interests. Traditional power grids lack a storage capability, so production must equal demand at all times. Energy production from renewable sources is often unreliable or poorly timed, so it requires smoothing to enhance its benefit. Vehicle to Grid (V2G) interaction provides a technology which mitigates both the difficulties in integration of renewable power generation as well as providing organic energy storage for a microgrid in the event of a necessity for an islanded condition. Military bases are equipped with extensive vehicle fleets for both operational support and logistics requirements. This report analyzes the potential benefit of electrifying this fleet of vehicle assets as V2G capable Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) or Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) to not only achieve energy savings with the vehicles themselves, but to concurrently achieve advances in the integration of collocated renewable resources as well as provide enhanced independent microgrid operation. The military base environment provides a new and compelling use for V2G, in that individual vehicle assets are commandable and therefore much easier to aggregate reliably. Also of interest is the requirement in an “islanded” scenario, where V2G must potentially provide all the requirements of a full power grid including Base Load, Peak Load, and Ancillary Services reliably and with some level of improved capability over traditional power generation technologies such as backup diesel generation. This study explores the viability of V2G as part of the DoD’s energy initiatives. It provides a review of energy requirements for islanded operation on a typical military air base, an optimized fleet of BEV/PHEV assets to meet those requirements, and an idealized Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to govern their operation.

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Event Contact: Karen Mueller can be reached at (970) 491-3872

Sponsored by the Department of Mechanical Engineering.