The Potential of Vehicle-to-Grid to Support the Energy Transition: A Case Study on Switzerland

Loris Di Natale,Luca Funk,Giovanni Sansavini,Martin Rüdisüli,Bratislav Svetozarevic,Giacomo Pareschi,Philipp Heer

doi:10.3390/en14164812

Abstract

Energy systems are undergoing a profound transition worldwide, substituting nuclear and thermal power with intermittent renewable energy sources (RES), creating discrepancies between the production and consumption of electricity and increasing their dependence on greenhouse gas (GHG) intensive imports from neighboring energy systems. In this study, we analyze the concurrent electrification of the mobility sector and investigate the impact of electric vehicles (EVs) on energy systems with a large share of renewable energy sources. In particular, we build an optimization framework to assess how Evs could compete and interplay with other energy storage technologies to minimize GHG-intensive electricity imports, leveraging the installed Swiss reservoir and pumped hydropower plants (PHS) as examples. Controlling bidirectional EVs or reservoirs shows potential to decrease imported emissions by 33–40%, and 60% can be reached if they are controlled simultaneously and with the support of PHS facilities when solar PV panels produce a large share of electricity. However, even if vehicle-to-grid (V2G) can support the energy transition, we find that its benefits will reach their full potential well before EVs penetrate the mobility sector to a large extent and that EVs only contribute marginally to long-term energy storage. Hence, even with a widespread adoption of EVs, we cannot expect V2G to single-handedly solve the growing mismatch problem between the production and consumption of electricity.

Highlights

Worldwide, energy sectors are facing profound changes following the Paris Agreement pledges to limit global warming to well below 2 °C [1]
We investigate the idealized potential of controlled operations of electric vehicles (EVs), reservoirs, and Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS) facilities to support the Swiss power system and reduce the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG)-intensive electricity imports
(or shorter) optimizations might, be helpful in real case studies, where one could use accurate models to predict the Swiss electricity production and consumption, the behavior of EVs, and the GHG intensity of the European grid over this shorter horizon and minimize the amount of imported GHG emissions based on those assumptions

Summary

Introduction

Energy sectors are facing profound changes following the Paris Agreement pledges to limit global warming to well below 2 °C [1]. This plot exhibits how storage technologies—PHS facilities in that case—are utilized as of today, with more activity over the summer period when energy surpluses can be exploited

Methods

Results

Conclusion