A possibility of the power supply leveling by using electric vehicles as storage batteries

Abstract

After the big earthquake on March 11, 2011 at Fukushima, there are not enough power supply sources in Japan since almost all nuclear power plants stopped for checking each safety level, and no alternative power supply source is available. Then there is a risk that the amount of electric power demand would exceed the maximum amount of electric power supply. Once the power demand would exceed the power supply, a widespread blackout would occur. To avoid this kind of blackout, Japanese citizens are required to reduce the electric power demand during the peak power demand hours. But this means that if the peak of the power demand can be cut down, there is no reason to reduce the power demand. To cut down the peak of the power demand, we need to change the point of view from the increase of power supply and/or the decrease of power demand to the power supply leveling. Then we decided to study a possibility of the power supply leveling with the storage batteries. But since the storage battery is not popular as a home electric appliance, then we started to study it with electric vehicles (EVs) as storage batteries. This study must depend on behaviors of each family and each family has a different life style. Then in this study, we chose the approach by the simulation with user model.