Power flows both ways.

When an EV can push power back out — to the grid (V2G), a home (V2H), or a building (V2B) — it becomes backup power and a grid-flexibility resource. ComEd wanted to know whether that's actually good for the environment compared with the alternatives, and how to deploy it so that low-income and environmental-justice communities benefit instead of being passed over.

I pitched a study that answers both questions in one framework: a prospective life cycle assessment for the environmental side, and a spatial equity analysis for the social side.

The hard part is the word "prospective." V2X is around technology readiness level 5 today; the study has to estimate impacts out to 2040, on a grid whose fuel mix is changing every year. That meant modeling hourly grid emissions under three futures — base, optimistic, and pessimistic — and being honest about uncertainty with Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis.

The pitch had to convince a utility that a designer-led research team could deliver an engineering-grade assessment. The design choices did that work. We defined a functional unit per system (one kilowatt-hour of net energy discharged), drew the boundary at the use phase — charging, discharging, inverter losses, battery degradation, round-trip efficiency — and committed to documenting every assumption in a pedigree matrix so reviewers could judge data quality for themselves.

Each scenario got real numbers: discharge cycles per year, energy per discharge, round-trip efficiency, end-of-life battery capacity, and how much degradation is fairly attributed to V2X use rather than ordinary driving.

All five flexible-energy systems reduce emissions, and the rankings are consistent: V2G avoids the most carbon per kilowatt-hour today. The twist is the trend. As the grid gets cleaner, the bi-directional systems' climate benefit shrinks — while managed charging's benefit grows roughly five-fold by 2040, because its value comes from shifting load into increasingly clean off-peak hours.

The data also surfaced a caution: in the optimistic 2030 scenario, peak emissions briefly fall below off-peak in some hours. A time-of-use program calibrated for today's grid could shift load into dirtier hours. Explore the numbers:

Environmental benefit means little if the technology lands only in wealthy zip codes. The second half of the study was a GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis of ComEd's service territory: socio-economic criteria weighted with an analytical hierarchy process, mapped, and ranked with TOPSIS to find the best sites for equitable V2X deployment — with specific attention to Illinois' environmental-justice, R3, and low-income designations.

The atlas below is a working recreation of that analysis built from the project's actual data layers: ComEd-territory zip codes, census tracts bridged through the HUD crosswalk, DOE LEAD energy burden, the 21 peaker plants in ComEd territory with their emissions and EJ demographics, and EV registrations per zip from the Illinois Secretary of State (2019–2025), projected forward with a logistic growth model. The working hypothesis: keeping peaker plants turned off delivers its biggest social impact in EIEC communities — the places where high energy burden, peaker pollution, and a growing dispatchable EV fleet overlap.

The study completed in December 2025. The full pLCA, the spatial equity MCDA, scenario integration, and final recommendations were delivered to ComEd, along with the ArcGIS data layers, Power BI dashboards, survey instruments, and outreach materials specified in the statement of work. (The final deliverables are ComEd's, so the quantitative results shown on this page come from the midpoint technical memo.) The strategic findings held: bi-directional charging's climate case is strongest in the next decade, its resilience case is durable, and time-of-use programs will need recalibration as the grid changes.

Years of embedding with engineers is what made this one possible: I scoped the methodology, made the pitch, and ran the study, backed by my leadership and our partners at ICF and ComEd.