Scenario-Based Analysis on the Impacts of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles' (PHEV) Penetration into the Transportation Sector

With the improved awareness of negative environmental impact from traditional automobile fuel consumption and the fluctuating increase of gas price, fuel demand and supply in the transportation sector and strategies of securing it has gained governmental and public attentions. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), as an alternative to the conventional vehicles, become appealing. A PHEV is a hybrid electric vehicle with sufficient battery to support its daily travel and an internal combustion engine to allow overtime travel, which is expected to help reduce obnoxious chemicals emission and oil dependency caused by the usage of conventional vehicles. In this paper, we employed the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) developed by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to study the impact from PHEV penetration into the transportation sector on the future electric generation capacity expansion in the United States. Arbitrary penetration trajectories of PHEVs for light duty vehicles (i.e., cars, pickup trucks, SUVs) were postulated that started penetration in 2006 and projected 110 million PHEV vehicles till 2030. It shows that large volume of PHEV penetration can reduce most negative impacts.