By lead author Yamil Essus (yaessus@ncsu.edu)
We are very excited to share the publication of our most recent paper!
Paper Summary:
Electric vehicles link mobility to the availability of electric power, posing a risk of rendering transportation unavailable during blackouts. We developed a computational framework to quantify the impact of this change on access. We found that solutions like larger batteries and vehicle-to-grid technologies offer benefits, but their effectiveness depends heavily on the geographic distribution of services. This highlights the importance of considering unintended consequences of public policies and city planning. Equitable access to essential services—such as supermarkets, schools, and parks—is the most important aspect of community resilience, making it crucial that vehicle electrification is thoughtfully integrated into sustainable transportation policies.
- What did this research initially set out to find?
We started this research project aiming to explore the impacts of Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies on mobility. The key insight was that under vehicle electrification, distance traveled by car [km] could be expressed in terms of electricity consumption [kWh]. Because electricity could serve multiple needs (groceries vs. hair dryers), there was a trade-off between essential services and quality-of-life. We found this trade-off to be interesting and insightful but ended up unveiling a larger problem in the disparities in access across the country.
- What’s something you learned (a fact or crazy figure) doing this work?
I still can’t get over the fact that there are dozens of “Orange Counties”. As an international student, I was really not expecting to find this kind of duplicate. I started retrieving the location of services based on county names, which quickly became a problem. At least now I understand why people in movies talk about “City, State” like the city is not enough.
- What was one software package/tool you used in this project that you hadn’t used before?
During this project, I took the courage to learn how to use Docker, and I’m very happy about it. It really is a wonderful tool and it used to sound very intimidating but now I try to squeeze it on everything I do. The routing engine we used to compute shortest paths between households and services could be compiled and run directly but it was strongly suggested to use the provided Docker image so that’s what I did.
- What’s been your go-to procrastination activity when working on this paper?
I got really into baking when we started the project. I tried all sorts of sourdough breads and pizzas. It was pretty fun but consumed a lot of energy.
- Where do you think you did most of this work (home, desk, coffee shops?)
Probably at home with two honorable mentions. First, Hunt library. What a great place to get some work done. Second, a good part of the production happened overseas while I was stuck in Chile after a clerk mistake at the consulate.