Abstract
The decarbonization of city energy systems plays an important role to meet climate targets. We examine the consequences of integrating electric cars and buses into the city energy system (60% of private cars and 100% of public buses), using three different charging strategies in a modelling tool that considers local generation and storage of electricity and heat, electricity import to the city, and investments to achieve net-zero emissions from local electricity and heating in 2050. We find that up to 85% of the demand for the charging of electric cars is flexible and that smart charging strategies can facilitate 62% solar PV in the charging electricity mix, compared to 24% when cars are charged directly when parked. Electric buses are less flexible, but the timing of charging enables up to 32% to be supplied by solar PV. The benefit from smart charging to the city energy system can be exploited when charging is aligned with the local value of electricity in the city. Smart charging for cars reduces the need for investments in stationary batteries and peak units in the city electricity and heating sectors. Thus, our results point to the importance of sectoral coupling to exploit flexibility options in the city electricity, district heating and transport sectors.
Highlights
Cities are home to an increasing share of the growing global popu lation [1]
We model the integration of passenger battery electric cars (BECs) and battery electric public buses (BEBs) into a city energy system through three different charging strategies and analyze their potential for charging flexibility
In the BEC fleet, we find that there is potential to postpone 85% of the charging when using a Smart charging strategy coordinated with the city energy system, as compared to an Inflexible charging strategy in which cars are charged directly upon arrival
Summary
As a consequence of this development, the demands for electricity, heating and cooling, as well as for private and public trans port occur predominantly in cities and the local supply of these energy carriers will play an important role. A major challenge for city planning in the upcoming decades will be, to ensure that strategies for meeting these growing demands in the urban system are in line with efficient long-term targets to limit global warming [2]. The utilization of flexibility from storage systems, flexible demands and sectoral coupling on city scale in com bination with local supply of electricity and heat is expected to be an important part of a fully decarbonized energy system. The integration between sectors and actors in the city, aided by communication tech nologies and infrastructure, with the overall aim to improve environ mental, societal or economic performance, are collectively referred to as the Smart City [3,4,5]
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