A Computational Framework for Modeling Access to Services and the Resilience Impacts of Electric Vehicles During Blackouts

Abstract

Vehicle electrification poses the risk of making transportation unavailable during blackouts. Because of this, access to essential services will be significantly constrained in the event of a widespread power outage. We develop a generalizable computational framework to estimate the impacts of this link on access to services and apply it to North Carolina. Using open-source data, we model household-level energy consumption on access to supermarkets, parks and schools as well as daily commuting to work. We find that large driving distances paired with current vehicle technology lead to a significant risk of losing access for most of the population. We explore how the relationship between electric vehicle cost and battery capacity leads to increased risk for low-income households. We also find correlations between this risk and demographic variables like income and age. Equitable access to services is the most important aspect of community resilience, and the implications of complete vehicle electrification during blackouts need to be adequately incorporated by policy-makers.