Using electric vehicles as flexible resource in power systems: A case study in the Netherlands

Abstract

Electromobility is expected to experience a significant uptake in the coming years, particularly in the Netherlands, where the possibility to ban combustion engine car sales by 2025 is under discussion. This paper aims at evaluating the impact of an increased penetration of battery electric vehicles (BEV) on the Dutch power system, using the Dispa-SET unit commitment and optimal dispatch model. The analysis starts with an extensive dataset of charging transactions for the year 2015 in the Netherlands, recorded from about one third of all public charging stations in the country. This dataset is used to generate the charging load profile of the current BEV fleet, and to compute the connected BEV battery capacity at each hour of the year, to be used for modelling a Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) option in the system. Different hypotheses are formulated on the future penetration of this technology. The corresponding charging profiles and available battery capacities are generated. These time series are entered into Dispa-SET to simulate the Dutch power system under different hypotheses of BEV and variable renewable energy deployment. Two different BEV charging cases are distinguished: an immediate charging strategy, and the use of BEV battery capacity as variable storage unit. For each scenario, aggregated indicators are computed, including average electricity price, cycling of power plants, electricity mix in each country, or level of curtailment. Results indicate that in the Netherlands the effect of BEV is negligible at the current deployment level. It becomes significant if BEV constitute the largest share of the vehicles fleet. In this case, the additional demand is absorbed by the power system at the expense of higher electricity generation costs. If BEVs are used for V2G, they can positively impact the power system, increasing system flexibility and significantly reducing the level of curtailment and electricity generation costs in case of high shares of renewable sources.