Cost-benefit analysis of plug-in electric vehicles penetration

It is expected that in the near future the number of Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEV) could increase significantly due to their low pollution emissions, high fuel economy, and mitigation of security issues related to oil technical and economic management. Many works have dealt with the impact of PEV on the power and distribution grids, and on other particular aspects, but very few perform more general cost benefit analyses of their global impact. This paper does it in two steps. First, a hydro-thermal unit commitment for a full year simulation provides electricity and reserve prices for different charging strategies. Then, the model computes economic estimations for the costs of the charging infrastructure, specific PEV costs and main externalities (emissions, health benefits and energetic dependence). The model is intended to provide meaningful results on the global economic balance of PEV penetration, helping for example in feed-in tariffs, fuel taxes redesign or other regulatory analyses.