Unlocking vehicle-to-grid potential of load shifting in China’s megacities considering comprehensive real-world behaviors

Journal article

Global decarbonization necessitates large-scale electrification, bringing load stability challenges to urban grids. While Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology using private plug-in electric vehicles (P-PEVs) can balance the loads, its potential at megacity-level remains unclear due to the complexity of fine-grained, user-centric modelling. Here, we propose a Mobility and V2G Coupled (MOVC) framework, which depicts individual P-PEV travel-charge behaviors and evaluates user V2G concerns regarding willingness, compensation, and battery degradation. The framework analyzes 480,000 P-PEVs in Shenzhen, China, revealing a 2300 MW peak-shaving capacity, reducing peak-valley ratios by 73%. V2G strategies that prioritize user satisfaction hardly sacrifice the load shifting performance, but reduce battery degradation costs and compensation costs by 30-40% and 5-13% respectively. A forward-looking scenario considering fully-deployed quick charging (QC) in four China’s megacities reveals 0%-12% lower peak-valley ratios with more inequal V2G scheduling (4%-95% higher standard deviation). This study enlightens megacity-level V2G potential evaluations and their policy-making considering real-world behaviors.

Authors: Li, K; Li, X; Xiong, Z; Tao, S; Zhao, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Nature Communications
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 1
• Article number: 10087
• Publication date: 2025-11-18
• Acceptance date: 2025-10-07
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65073-8
• EISSN: 2041-1723
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• Language: English