IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v178y2026ics0967070x25004950.html

Assessing the potential of combined vehicle-to-grid and rooftop photovoltaics strategies for reshaping city-level power load profiles

Author

Listed:
  • Yang, Jingna
  • Zhou, Kaile

Abstract

The rapid growth of electric vehicles (EVs) and rooftop photovoltaics (RPVs) is transforming urban energy systems, their combined impacts on city-level power load demand remain underexplored. This study develops a scenario-based framework to evaluate combined impact of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) discharging strategies and RPV deployment on representative weekday hourly net load, peak and valley loads, and load fluctuation intensity across 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Results indicate that the combined strategies integrating orderly EV charging and discharging with RPV generation in scenario S9 can reduce the peak load by approximately 21.9 GW, lower the peak–valley difference to around 51.6 GW, and reduce the load fluctuation intensity by approximately 50 % compared with the baseline scenario in 2030 in YRD region. Lower electricity demand cities, such as Lianyungang, exhibit up to 70 % reductions in midday load, whereas high-load metropolitan areas, such Shanghai, show relatively limited improvements. However, when an excessive number of EVs participate in V2G or the RPV penetration becomes too high, load may experience stronger fluctuations. Policy recommendations include promoting coordinated EV charging and discharging, and the integrated deployment of RPV and energy storage systems to enhance energy system resilience.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang, Jingna & Zhou, Kaile, 2026. "Assessing the potential of combined vehicle-to-grid and rooftop photovoltaics strategies for reshaping city-level power load profiles," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:178:y:2026:i:c:s0967070x25004950
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2025.103952
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X25004950
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tranpol.2025.103952?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Safari, Ashkan & Rahimi, Afshin, 2025. "Vehicle-to-everything mode of operation technologies: A state-of-art systematic review," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 398(C).
    2. Siobhan Powell & Gustavo Vianna Cezar & Liang Min & Inês M. L. Azevedo & Ram Rajagopal, 2022. "Charging infrastructure access and operation to reduce the grid impacts of deep electric vehicle adoption," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(10), pages 932-945, October.
    3. Cai, Qiran & Qing, Jing & Xu, Qingyang & Shi, Gang & Liang, Qiao-Mei, 2024. "Techno-economic impact of electricity price mechanism and demand response on residential rooftop photovoltaic integration," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PB).
    4. Wolde-Rufael, Yemane, 2006. "Electricity consumption and economic growth: a time series experience for 17 African countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1106-1114, July.
    5. Senatla, Mamahloko & Bansal, Ramesh C. & Naidoo, Raj M. & Mbungu, Nsilulu T. & Yusuf, Teslim & Bredenkamp, Barry, 2025. "Increasing the deployment of solar PV in the commercial sector in South Africa: Buildings as assets for energy transition," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    6. Sayarshad, Hamid R., 2025. "Coordinated routing, charging, and power grid for electric and hydrogen vehicles with renewable energy integration," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    7. Liu, Xuan & Yang, Dujuan & Donkers, Alex & de Vries, Bauke, 2025. "Building sustainable urban energy systems: The role of linked data in photovoltaic generation estimation at neighbourhood level," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 378(PA).
    8. Rahman, Md Mustafizur & Gemechu, Eskinder & Oni, Abayomi Olufemi & Kumar, Amit, 2023. "The development of a techno-economic model for assessment of cost of energy storage for vehicle-to-grid applications in a cold climate," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 262(PA).
    9. Hipolito, F. & Vandet, C.A. & Rich, J., 2022. "Charging, steady-state SoC and energy storage distributions for EV fleets," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    10. Noel, Lance & Zarazua de Rubens, Gerardo & Kester, Johannes & Sovacool, Benjamin K., 2018. "Beyond emissions and economics: Rethinking the co-benefits of electric vehicles (EVs) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G)," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 130-137.
    11. Ahn, Young-Hwan & Woo, Jung-Hun & Wagner, Fabian & Yoo, Seung Jick, 2019. "Downscaled energy demand projection at the local level using the Iterative Proportional Fitting procedure," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(C), pages 384-400.
    12. Chunbo Zhang & Xiang Zhao & Romain Sacchi & Fengqi You, 2023. "Trade-off between critical metal requirement and transportation decarbonization in automotive electrification," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-16, December.
    13. Liu, Qilu & Cheng, Kaiming & Zhuang, Yanjie, 2022. "Estimation of city energy consumption in China based on downscaling energy balance tables," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    14. Wu, Wei & Zhang, Tingting & Xie, Xiaomin & Huang, Zhen, 2021. "Regional low carbon development pathways for the Yangtze River Delta region in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    15. Abdelfattah, Wael & Abdelhamid, Ahmed Sayed & Hasanien, Hany M. & Rashad, Basem Abd-Elhamed, 2024. "Smart vehicle-to-grid integration strategy for enhancing distribution system performance and electric vehicle profitability," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).
    16. Mai Shi & Xi Lu & Michael T. Craig, 2024. "Climate change will impact the value and optimal adoption of residential rooftop solar," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 14(5), pages 482-489, May.
    17. Jidi Cao & Yile Wang & Haiyue Liu, 2024. "Stock market reaction to new energy vehicle industry development plan: an event study in China," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(7), pages 934-948, August.
    18. Zhixin Zhang & Min Chen & Teng Zhong & Rui Zhu & Zhen Qian & Fan Zhang & Yue Yang & Kai Zhang & Paolo Santi & Kaicun Wang & Yingxia Pu & Lixin Tian & Guonian Lü & Jinyue Yan, 2023. "Carbon mitigation potential afforded by rooftop photovoltaic in China," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-12, December.
    19. Zhixin Zhang & Zhen Qian & Min Chen & Rui Zhu & Fan Zhang & Teng Zhong & Jian Lin & Liang Ning & Wei Xie & Felix Creutzig & Wenjun Tang & Laibao Liu & Jiachuan Yang & Ye Pu & Wenjia Cai & Yingxia Pu &, 2025. "Worldwide rooftop photovoltaic electricity generation may mitigate global warming," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 15(4), pages 393-402, April.
    20. Liu, Junling & Li, Mengyue & Xue, Liya & Kobashi, Takuro, 2022. "A framework to evaluate the energy-environment-economic impacts of developing rooftop photovoltaics integrated with electric vehicles at city level," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 647-657.
    21. Bi Fan & Zhibin Wen & Quande Qin, 2024. "Competition and cooperation mechanism of new energy vehicle policies in China’s key regions," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    22. Chengjian Xu & Paul Behrens & Paul Gasper & Kandler Smith & Mingming Hu & Arnold Tukker & Bernhard Steubing, 2023. "Electric vehicle batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand by as early as 2030," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    23. Xin, Wentao & Lu, Zhenwei & Yu, Zhe & He, Zhaoxuan & Pu, Hongjiang & Ye, Bin, 2025. "Aggregator-driven optimisation of electric vehicle charging stations in Shenzhen: Synergising smart charging, renewable energy integration and energy storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 397(C).
    24. Walter, J.-C. & Barkema, G.T., 2015. "An introduction to Monte Carlo methods," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 418(C), pages 78-87.
    25. Yu, Hang & Niu, Songyan & Shang, Yitong & Shao, Ziyun & Jia, Youwei & Jian, Linni, 2022. "Electric vehicles integration and vehicle-to-grid operation in active distribution grids: A comprehensive review on power architectures, grid connection standards and typical applications," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    26. Pupo-Roncallo, Oscar & Campillo, Javier & Ingham, Derek & Hughes, Kevin & Pourkashanian, Mohammed, 2019. "Large scale integration of renewable energy sources (RES) in the future Colombian energy system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    27. Debnath, Kumar Biswajit & Jenkins, David P. & Patidar, Sandhya & Peacock, Andrew D., 2024. "Remote work might unlock solar PV's potential of cracking the ‘Duck Curve’," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 367(C).
    28. Xue, Liya & Liu, Junling & Lin, Xiaojing & Li, Mengyue & Kobashi, Takuro, 2024. "Assessing urban rooftop PV economics for regional deployment by integrating local socioeconomic, technological, and policy conditions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 353(PA).
    29. Yijing Wang & Rong Wang & Katsumasa Tanaka & Philippe Ciais & Josep Penuelas & Yves Balkanski & Jordi Sardans & Didier Hauglustaine & Wang Liu & Xiaofan Xing & Jiarong Li & Siqing Xu & Yuankang Xiong , 2023. "Accelerating the energy transition towards photovoltaic and wind in China," Nature, Nature, vol. 619(7971), pages 761-767, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guo, Jiacheng & Peng, Jinqing & Luo, Yimo & Wu, Hao & Yan, Jinyue & Yang, Hongxing, 2026. "Deployment strategies and carbon reduction potential of hybrid energy storage systems for industrial parks," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 256(PB).
    2. Rehman, Anis Ur & Lu, Junwei & Du, Bo & Bai, Feifei & Sanjari, Mohammad J. & Hossain, Md Alamgir, 2026. "Vehicle-to-grid technology for load balancing and energy management: A comprehensive review of technical, economic and environmental perspectives," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 402(PB).
    3. Li, Wenkai & Liu, Hongliang & Hu, Xiaomei & Lu, Xingcheng & Tao, Shengli & Ma, Qin & Yang, Haitao & Liu, Yuanchi & Li, Mingxuan & Li, Tianhong & Guo, Qinghua, 2026. "Mapping the global potential of onshore field-scale solar PV using positive-unlabeled deep learning," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 402(PB).
    4. Nadimi, Reza & Goto, Mika, 2025. "Vehicle grid integration planning tool: Novel approach in case of Tokyo," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 399(C).
    5. Wang, Feng & Chen, Zhiyuan, 2025. "Comparison of county-level rooftop photovoltaic development models in China's electricity spot market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    6. Zhang, Chengquan & Kitamura, Hiroshi & Goto, Mika, 2024. "Feasibility of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) implementation in Japan: A regional analysis of the electricity supply and demand adjustment market," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 311(C).
    7. Fu, Zhi & Liu, Xiaochen & Zhang, Ji & Zhang, Tao & Liu, Xiaohua & Jiang, Yi, 2025. "Orderly solar charging of electric vehicles and its impact on charging behavior: A year-round field experiment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 381(C).
    8. Adeline Gu'eret & Wolf-Peter Schill & Carlos Gaete-Morales, 2024. "Impacts of electric carsharing on a power sector with variable renewables," Papers 2402.19380, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    9. Huang, Xi & Pan, Guangsheng & Gu, Wei & Gu, Zhongfan, 2026. "Risk analysis and responses of PV output extreme in China's whole county PV program," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    10. Hu, Difeng, 2026. "Parameter analysis and layout optimization of a rooftop photovoltaic power system using a data-driven approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 347(C).
    11. Hu, Yang & Bahamonde-Birke, Francisco J. & Ettema, Dick, 2025. "Vehicle-to-grid, why not? An interview with battery electric vehicle users with various driving patterns in Utrecht, the Netherlands," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 231-240.
    12. Liu, Ke & Liu, Yanli & Si, Gang & Lu, Xin & Xie, Yan, 2025. "Punctual V2G scheduling circle: Evaluate and enhance transfer V2G capability through adaptive redistribution," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 383(C).
    13. Liu, Bingchun & Zhao, Shunfan & Zheng, Shize & Zhang, Fukai & Li, Zefeng & Gao, Xu & Wang, Ying, 2025. "Assessing the potential impact of aerosol scenarios for rooftop PV regional deployment," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 246(C).
    14. Yuan, Qiuling & Meng, Fanxin & Li, Weijiao & Lin, Jianyi & Puppim de Oliveira, Jose A. & Yang, Zhifeng, 2025. "Tradeoff optimization of urban roof systems oriented to food-water-energy nexus," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 380(C).
    15. Xiaohuan Xie & Haifeng Deng & Shengyuan Li & Zhonghua Gou, 2024. "Optimizing Land Use for Carbon Neutrality: Integrating Photovoltaic Development in Lingbao, Henan Province," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-18, January.
    16. Li, Xiaohui & Wang, Zhenpo & Zhang, Lei & Sun, Fengchun & Cui, Dingsong & Hecht, Christopher & Figgener, Jan & Sauer, Dirk Uwe, 2023. "Electric vehicle behavior modeling and applications in vehicle-grid integration: An overview," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    17. Liu, J.L. & Wang, T.T. & Wang, Y.H. & Lin, X.J. & Zhou, R. & Wang, K., 2025. "China's 1+N policy system supports an earlier peak in carbon emissions," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    18. Xu, Jian & Guo, Zhiling & Yu, Qing & Dong, Kechuan & Tan, Hongjun & Zhang, Haoran & Yan, Jinyue, 2025. "Spatiotemporal feature encoded deep learning method for rooftop PV potential assessment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 394(C).
    19. Xin, Qing-Yao & Zhang, Bin & Zhang, Fang & Bansal, Prateek, 2025. "Coordinating demand response strategies for electric vehicles and second-life battery energy storage to optimize renewable energy absorption under demand and supply uncertainties," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    20. Wang, Chen-Han & Wang, Jen Chun & Tsai, Hsiang-Yuan & Chung, Sung-Chin, 2025. "Assessment of photovoltaic power potential on Taiwan school rooftops," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:178:y:2026:i:c:s0967070x25004950. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.