Community-to-vehicle-to-community (C2V2C) for inter-community electricity delivery and sharing via electric vehicle: Performance evaluation and robustness analysis

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) possess untapped potential as mobile power banks for actively delivering electricity between different energy communities, known as Community-to-Vehicle-to-Community (C2V2C) service. While C2V2C represents an effective means of inter-community electricity sharing, limited research explores EVs' role in electricity delivery between locations. Suitable control approaches of EV charging for the C2V2C service are lacking, and it is unclear how robust the C2V2C service is and how its performance is affected by different factors. This paper aims to bridge these research gaps by developing an advanced control of EV smart charging/discharging to facilitate the C2V2C service. By comparing the power balance in the EVs' current-connecting and next-destination communities, the advanced control derives a target state-of-charge for the EVs in the current-connecting community, which can optimize the electricity delivery between the two communities. Then, the robustness of the C2V2C service is analyzed by evaluating its performances under different scenarios. Major factors like community combinations, renewable energy system (RES) configurations, EV battery capacity and numbers are examined for their impacts on C2V2C performance. The findings demonstrate that the C2V2C service significantly enhances energy balance across diverse community combinations, particularly in workplaces with substantial RES capacity. A large EV battery capacity is beneficial for performance improvements, but the impact diminishes at higher values due to limited surplus renewables availability. The increasing EV number enhances both electricity delivery capability and utilization of self-produced renewables. This study validated the effectiveness of the C2V2C service and provides valuable insights into optimizing its application across different scenarios.