Plug-in-hybrid vehicle use, energy consumption, and greenhouse emissions: An analysis of household vehicle placements in northern California

Energies

Volumn 4, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 435-457

  Williams, Brett ^a   Martin, Elliot ^a   Lipman, Timothy ^a   Kammen, Daniel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Alternative fuel; Battery size; Charging; Electric drive; Energy use; Fuel consumption; Greenhouse gas emissions; Household driving behavior; Plug in hybrid; Real world data

Indexed keywords

ALTERNATIVE FUELS; CHARGING (BATTERIES); CHARGING (FURNACE); CRASHWORTHINESS; DIGITAL STORAGE; ELECTRIC DRIVES; ENERGY UTILIZATION; FLEET OPERATIONS; FUEL CONSUMPTION; GAS EMISSIONS; GREENHOUSE GASES; GREENHOUSES; HYBRID VEHICLES; VEHICLES;

BATTERY SIZE; DRIVING BEHAVIOR; ENERGY USE; PLUG-IN HYBRIDS; REAL-WORLD;

PLUG-IN HYBRID VEHICLES;

EID: 79953197975     PISSN: None     EISSN: 19961073     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3390/en4030435     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Independent of vehicle size, plug-in drivetrain design ranges through three major categories, from small-battery, blended-mode plug-in hybrids based on series-parallel gasoline-combustion hybrids such as the Toyota Prius PHV to range-extender series hybrids such as the Chevy Volt to allbattery electric vehicles (EVs) such as the Nissan LEAF.
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13. The authors take the 2.6 kWh to be rated, not available, capacity.
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16. This is of course highly subject to specific driving conditions.
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18. Note that although the data available required us to calculate and use a constant, average rate throughout a given event, the rates are not constant across all events (e.g., see Figure A-3b), providing more information than a uniformly constant rate assumption.
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26. This average, however, may be slightly depressed by a number of very short charging events, as seen in Figure A-2. There does not appear to be a strong pattern to 15 such events shorter than 2.5 minutes (e.g., there are various intervals between charging events before and after, a reasonable average charging power was achieved given the duration, and they appear singly and in pairs and grouped with longer charging events), but we speculate that any human "fiddling" that might contribute would decrease over time. There is some mixed evidence for this in the data that may be explored in a future analysis.
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33. Participants did have to pay for the additional electricity used at home over the course of their one-month placement, but were not subject to changes in utility rate structures, smart charging algorithms or other policy or technical constraints.