Economic and environmental evaluations of dedicated and residential electric tariffs for plug-in electric vehicles

Plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) owners may have multiple different electric tariffs offered by their local utility companies from which to choose. The offered PEV tariffs are designed mainly to shift the electric demand for charging cars to the time when the grid is less strained. This paper investigates both the economic and the environmental impacts of adopting dedicated PEV electric tariffs from the PEV owners' perspective. The overall conclusion is that the dedicated tariffs are well designed for PEVs from the economical perspective but not from the environmental perspective. Case studies of the cost minimization model show that on average the dedicated PEV tariffs will result in approximately half the cost of the electric bill and slightly lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (less than 1%) compared with the standard flat-rate residential tariffs. Case studies of the emission minimization model show that the GHG emissions can be reduced by 10.47% as compared with the cost minimization model, but this will lead to an increase in the total charging cost that can be as high as 15.44% on average.