Power sector effects of alternative options for electrifying heavy-duty vehicles

Abstract

In the passenger car segment, battery-electric vehicles have emerged as the most promising option to decarbonize transportation. For heavy-duty vehicles, the technology space still appears to be more open. Aside from stationary-charged battery-electric trucks, electric road systems (ERS) for dynamic power transfer to electric vehicles are also discussed, as well as trucks that use hydrogen fuel cells or e-fuels. Here we investigate the power sector implications of these different options. We apply an open-source power sector capacity expansion model to future scenarios of Germany with high renewable energy shares, drawing on detailed route-based truck mobility data. Results show that power sector costs are highest in the case of e-fuels, and lowest for battery-electric and ERS trucks. The latter technologies can generally provide more temporal flexibility to the power sector than battery-electric and ERS trucks. Yet, these flexibility benefits do not outweigh their disadvantages in terms of energy efficiency. In equilibrium, the different flexibility characteristics lead to higher capacity expansion and use of solar PV for battery-electric and ERS trucks, and to a higher use of wind power for hydrogen and e-fuel trucks. If battery-electric and ERS trucks are charged in a non-optimized manner, power sector costs increase, but still remain below those of hydrogen and e-fuel trucks.