Electronic Green Journal

Using data pertaining to the wholesale electricity market for Long Island, New York, a market unusually dependent on natural gas- and petroleum-fired generation, the article examines the potential uses of plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles for various electricity grid services. The one area in which the vehicles could clearly play an economically favorable role is frequency regulation services, whereby the vehicles would minutely fluctuate the power they feed into the grid or take from it, in order to keep the total power being fed into the grid in constant balance with the total demand for power. The article also discusses the potential pitfalls in designing an institutional architecture for integrating the vehicles into the market for frequency regulation services.