Potential Impacts of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles on Locational Marginal Prices

This paper analyzes the potential impacts of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) on locational marginal prices (LMPs). PHEVs are the next generation of hybrid electric vehicles with batteries that can be recharged by plugging into a standard electric power outlet. On the one hand, PHEVs produce less emissions, have higher mileage, and reduce dependency on foreign supplies of oil. On the other hand, economic and technical obstacles still exist, and potential impacts on both transportation and electric power systems need to be studied. Simulation results from a PJM five-bus test example show that, if the electricity load increases by 10% due to recharging PHEVs, the load-weighted mean and standard deviation of LMPs would increase by more than 26% and 62%, respectively. The effects of battery stations that provide hot-swap services are also studied. If the load increases by 10%, by taking advantage of the spatial price differences and shipping batteries between different locations, the battery stations could recharge the batteries at 73% of what it would cost for PHEV drivers to recharge in home garages. At the same time, the mean of LMPs would only increase by about 6% and the standard deviation would even decrease.