Modeling and Regulating Electric Vehicles Carbon Flow in Coupled Transportation-Power Networks

Controlling indirect carbon emissions from electric vehicles (EVs) is essential to achieving a carbon-neutral future for the transportation sector, given the long-term goal of attaining 100% clean electricity. However, the interdependence between power and traffic flows, along with the differing time scales of power system dispatch and traffic flow variation, makes the analysis of spatio-temporal dynamics of indirect carbon emissions within the coupled transportation-power network challenging. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel spatio-temporal dynamic traffic flow model (STDT) that is synchronized with the time scales of power system dispatch and captures the interdependence between EV route choices in the transportation network and charging power from the power network. Then, by combining the time-varying local marginal carbon emissions at each charging station with STDT, a new concept called EV-CF (carbon flow of EVs) can be introduced to analyze the spatio-temporal variation in indirect carbon emissions caused by EV charging and transportation. The spatio-temporal EV-CF can be regulated to minimize indirect carbon emissions of a coupled transportation-power network while ensuring transportation requirements. The proposed model and regulation method are verified through case studies.