Sustainable integration of intermittent renewable energy and electrified light-duty transportation through repurposing batteries of plug-in electric vehicles

This study presents a framework for the integration of electrified light-duty vehicles and intermittent renewable energy towards a sustainable transportation system. Batteries of plug-in electric vehicles, obtained at their automotive end of life, are repurposed as stationary storage systems to integrate with intermittent wind power. The objective is to investigate how electric mobility can effectively meet the challenges of sustainability when the ultimate goal is to displace fossil fuels with new generation of low-cost intermittent renewable energy. The developed model of the framework considers future market penetration scenarios of electric vehicles, calculates availability of batteries at their automotive end of life, and estimates the storage capacity required to generate base-load wind power in the region of study. A new cost model is proposed to calculate the cost of delivering base-load power from renewables when they rely on intermittent sources. To evaluate the performance of the proposed framework, the renewable energy ratio is used as a measure of sustainability. A sample case study is performed for Canada, and the results suggest a self-sufficiency of the integrated system to address concerns of the impact of vehicular charging energy with renewable energy. •Sustainable integration of renewable energy and electric vehicles is addressed.•Model calculates repurposed storage capacity available for stationary applications.•Used batteries of electric vehicles can support higher share of renewable energy.•A new cost model is proposed to calculate generation cost of intermittent renewables.•The framework suggests a viable integration of renewable energy in transport sector.