Effect on battery life of vehicle-to-home electric power provision under Canadian residential electrical demand

Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) is a support activity using electric vehicles where the electric power stored in their batteries is supplied in response to residential electrical demand. It is understood that supplementary battery use such as V2H will reduce the battery service life. Judicious V2H activity can provide energy benefits at acceptable levels of battery life reduction. The present study employs a fundamentals based battery simulation to explore a range of V2H scenarios to assess the net energy benefits, and weigh these against associated battery life reduction attributable to V2H. The frequency (daily, weekly, monthly), duration and time-of-day of the V2H event were test parameters. Long term (i.e. given roughly 16 year battery calendar life) detailed simulations which included a daily driving regime together with V2H activity based on detailed residential electricity use data were used to determine battery lifetimes. Apart from aggressive driving and fast charging which greatly impact electric vehicle (EV) battery life, the largest contributions to battery degradation were for intense participation in V2H services, such as handling the household electrical load for 8 h daily. A 10.6 year battery life with no V2H, was lowered to about 10.2 years with 1 h daily V2H, and to about 8.5 years with 8 h daily V2H. However, lower intensity, and especially lower frequency use of the EV battery can still provide useful V2H services with acceptable battery degradation.