Review Reports - Innovation Needs for the Integration of Electric Vehicles into the Energy System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the integration of EVs into the energy system. The authors describe the state of the art, challenges, innovation needs, and recommendations for this issue. Two innovation paths are identified in this paper. One is the deployment of smart charging infrastructure and the other focuses on exploiting the synergies autonomous EVs. Comments about this paper are as follows.

This paper stresses on the concept explanations about the innovation needs for the EVs but is lack of practical examples’ analyses. Some quantitative or real cases’ analyses may enhance this paper. Figure 4 may need to be changed to figure 5 in line 5 of section 3.4.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing our paper. We reworked parts of the paper to improve it.

> An example for a workshop result that did not qualify to be described as an innovation factor has been included into the paper.

> Figure 4 has been changed to figure 5.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled: “Innovation needs for the integration of electric vehicles into the energy system” provides a pertinent analysis on the arising issues connected to the increasing penetration of electric vehicles. It is well written and developed. Minor comments for further improvement are provided below.

Figures are usually not printed at the introduction.

Reference [11] is better if moved before line 52.

Bibliography is recent and complete.

The authors describe the research procedure for the project “ELEKTRO POWER II - Positionierung der Wertschöpfungskette”, which is adequately elaborated.

Why a 15-year vision is investigated? Could also shorter or longer term scenarios be well suited to this analysis? Please elaborate and explain how these scenarios were selected.

At the sub-section 2.3, a short description of the derived from the research challenges could be very shortly provided, even if they are analyzed later in the text.

Which stakeholders represent the specialists that participated at the workshop of sub-section 2.4 e.g. manufacturers, citizens/users, utilities, standardization organizations, miners? Please clarify.

How do the results of this study compare to the findings of similar works? Are there any inconsistencies and why? On which degree the proposed approach is better that the alternatives?

The authors write: “The given indicators are derived from an analytic model based on literature data”. This shall be better explained.

At section 2.3, a short description points out the power grid expected disruption due to the connection of electric vehicles. However, the efforts currently taken to aggregate charging and provide incentives for low peak time charging are not adequately emphasized.

Figure 5 depicts a lot of information, which shall be better explained. Otherwise, this figure is better if it is simplified. The reviewer believes that only analyzing the four main categories does not provide the whole picture of the situation.

Recommendations for action are valid even being rather less optimistic than expected from the EV community.
Discussion and conclusions are supported from the analysis.

This manuscript could be accepted in the present form, however, it could be further improved adopting the comments above.

Author Response

Thank you for your very good comments. Please find our replys below.

Figures are usually not printed at the introduction.

> We decided to leave it there because it is no direct result of this work but it is necessary for the scenario described in 3.2.

Reference [11] is better if moved before line 52.

> This formating mistake was resolved. It belongs to the figure above.

Bibliography is recent and complete.

The authors describe the research procedure for the project “ELEKTRO POWER II - Positionierung der Wertschöpfungskette”, which is adequately elaborated.

Why a 15-year vision is investigated? Could also shorter or longer term scenarios be well suited to this analysis? Please elaborate and explain how these scenarios were selected.

> More detailed reasoning for the chosen time horizon is now given in the paper.

At the sub-section 2.3, a short description of the derived from the research challenges could be very shortly provided, even if they are analyzed later in the text.

> The description of chalenges has been extended. The identified chalenges are not named directly, as they are part of the results.

Which stakeholders represent the specialists that participated at the workshop of sub-section 2.4 e.g. manufacturers, citizens/users, utilities, standardization organizations, miners? Please clarify.

> A table has been inserted to give an overview on the composition of workshop participants.

How do the results of this study compare to the findings of similar works? Are there any inconsistencies and why? On which degree the proposed approach is better that the alternatives?

> A comparision of this study to others can be found in the discussion part. This has been extended by a statement describing how this study complements other works.

The authors write: “The given indicators are derived from an analytic model based on literature data”. This shall be better explained.

> A description of the model and the basic assumptions has been added. Also a reference to descriptions of other assumptions in the following sections has been included.

> Section 2.3 is the methodology description of the challenges. This quite specific point does not really fit in there. Nevertheless, this topic has been elaborated in sections 3.4 and 3.5. The mentioned efforts are mentioned in 3.5.2.

> Figure 5 has been explained in two ways. A more abstract view on the innovation paths on macro level and an explanation of individual factors by category level. The authors have added a description of the different levels of analysis.

Recommendations for action are valid even being rather less optimistic than expected from the EV community.
Discussion and conclusions are supported from the analysis.

This manuscript could be accepted in the present form, however, it could be further improved adopting the comments above.