Of the five technological options, individually owned vehicles were chosen by all the experts to be the closest in delivering V2G integration capabilities. While there are still many hurdles and challenges for this technology type, the direct power and decent adoption rate of EVs in the United States indicate great promise. Research should be undertaken to examine how federal or state policy might stimulate this technology option through incentivization schemes, either in the form of government subsidies to consumers or VGI services, or regulatory prioritization.
Because school buses are common in almost every locality of the United States and that they are already often on a structured time schedule, they came in as the second-highest rated policy option. Here, the main hurdle would be the high purchase cost of electric buses and/or converting buses from fossil fuel to electric usage. More research should be conducted to understand how policy can incentivize school districts and municipal decision-makers to invest in EV technology. Incentivization schemes like subsidization might be one way to do so, as might federal or state grants.
Municipal owned vehicles scored about average, due to their lack of widespread adoption. However, because these vehicles do not require coercion or incentive to participate in scheduling for peak-management, this option may have more potential as time progresses and the costs of EVs decrease. This is largely true for all of the options, but more so for electric military vehicles and garbage trucks. Once costs decrease in these areas, decision makers might want to start integrating into EV technology.
All five technology options present great promise for the future of V2G and VGI technologies. Now that research has narrowed down policy options, future research will want to focus on incentivizing individual car owners and municipal decision makers to adopt these technologies. Future research should also analyze summer time peak management scheduling for a variety of municipal and government owned EVs.
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