Consumers’ attitudes toward benefits and drawbacks of vehicle-to-grid technology : an agent-based model

Abstract

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) is an important technology for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the power grid. This paper first provided insights into people’s attitudes toward three key benefits and two key drawbacks of V2G, using survey data collected in Beijing in 2020. Further, we incorporated the empirical findings into a spatial agent-based joint model of EV and V2G adoption to explore how changes in people’s attitudes toward the benefits and drawbacks could influence the adoption of V2G. The survey results suggested that people tended to be most concerned about battery degradation and least concerned about grid support. Our diffusion simulation suggests that mitigating BEV owners’ concerns about battery degradation and enhancing public awareness of the cost-saving potential of V2G can significantly increase the number of people will/may adopt V2G with a BEV and a PHEV, respectively. However, these attitudinal improvements do not lead to a notable rise in V2G adopters. Furthermore, V2G tended to diffuse more easily across Plug-in Hybrid EV (PHEV) owners than Battery EV (BEV) owners. The results are expected to be helpful for shaping policies to promote the adoption of V2G.