Gridable vehicles and second life batteries for generation side asset management in the Smart Grid

As numerous generation side assets, such as the generating units and the plant equipments, in the Smart Grid system have already aged, well planned maintenance and operational scheduling is needed to maintain their expected longevity. Forced outages and short-notice/temporary maintenance of thermal units should also be considered as likely events. Backup energy sources are required to replace the generating units during the maintenance period. Using conventional storage devices for this purpose is feasible, but costly. Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, with vehicle-to-grid capability, referred to as gridable vehicles, are a useful choice as storage devices for the same. Second life batteries, disassembled from gridable vehicles after passing their automotive life, are another candidate for this purpose from the economic perspective. A system model that aggregates gridable vehicles and second life batteries together in an intelligent way to provide such backup energy can reduce significant storage costs. Such a system model is presented in this paper for a Smart Grid environment. Our simulation results suggest that using gridable vehicles and second life batteries together can save up to 70% of conventional storage energy costs and recover capital costs for the second life batteries in only 1.5 years. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.