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ZhaomiaoGuo
Assistant Professor, Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Zhaomiao Guo is an Assistant Professor in the Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining UT Austin, Dr. Guo was an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida and a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Guo received his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Tsinghua University, his M.S. degree in Transportation Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, his second M.S. degree in Applied Economics and his Ph.D. degree in transportation system engineering from the University of California at Davis. Dr. Guo's research centers around resilient and intelligent critical infrastructure systems, with a specific emphasis on the coupled and decentralized transportation and energy systems modeling and computation. His scholarly endeavors have garnered support from esteemed funding agencies at federal, state, and local levels including the NSF CAREER Award in 2023 and Amazon Research Award in 2026.
Abstract:
Electric vehicles are emerging as grid resources. The question is no longer simply whether an EV can send electricity back to the grid, but whether millions of privately owned, constantly moving batteries can provide reliable and fairly compensated services at scale. Their value depends not only on battery capacity, but also on when and where vehicles are connected, how people travel, and whether grid participation can preserve mobility and individual choice.
This talk traces the path from everyday charging behavior to market-based vehicle-to-grid coordination. Drawing on real-world charging and travel data, it examines when EV flexibility is available, how it can function as “virtual batteries” and “virtual power lines,” and how coordinated charging and discharging can reduce grid stress and support renewable energy integration. Case studies from Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area illustrate the scale of this resource. The talk then presents a modeling framework for decentralized market coordination among EV owners, charging providers, and grid operators, with incentives that reflect each vehicle’s time- and location-specific availability, reliability, and mobility constraints.