Abstract
The introduction of battery electric vehicles (BEV) and the expansion of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) power generation are both progressing at a fast pace to decarbonize the transport and the energy sector in Switzerland. These parallel developments have an enormous synergy potential as the actual decarbonization impact of BEVs depends heavily on the carbon footprint of the power source and the PV expansion requires local storage as a buffer to reduce negative impacts on the distribution grid. We present an empirical analysis based on a detailed 10-month data set of the charging and mobility behavior of 78 BEV users in Switzerland. It is combined with a fine-grained digital surface model of Switzerland to extract the detailed roof geometry and the corresponding rooftop PV generation capacity of each of the BEV owner’s houses.We test four different smart charging strategies with a varying degree of complexity and find that when charging uncontrolled (the strategy used during the study), BEV owners can only cover 15 % of their BEV’s demand using PV generated from the roofs of their own houses. A simple controlled charging approach greatly increases the average coverage to 56 % and up to 90 % or 99 % when using an optimized charging strategy without or with a home battery storage. All charging strategies ensure that the individual mobility behavior of the BEV owners is not affected.We further show that using rooftop PV power generation for BEV charging has a large potential to further decrease the climate impact of BEVs and propose simple adjustments to consider in charging strategies that help to increase the owners’ PV consumption.
Highlights
These examples sound promising; we are currently losing the global fight against climate change
China plans to peak in carbon emissions in 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 [2], the European Union (EU) adopted the European Green Deal and Switzerland passed the Climate strategy 2050 that targets climate neutrality in tween the emission reduction that is achieved if all countries implement their proposed measures and the emission reductions that are required to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement
While many of these proposals consider a wide range of different decarbonization measures, our study focuses only on battery electric vehicles (BEV) as electrification is likely to be the main factor for the decarbonization of transport
Summary
These examples sound promising; we are currently losing the global fight against climate change. In the light of the threatening progression of climate change 196 countries have negotiated the Paris Agreement and committed to keep the global temperature increase to well below 2 ◦ C compared to preindustrial levels [1] To reach this goal, the committing countries formulated national emission targets and measures to achieve a decarbonization of their economies. China plans to peak in carbon emissions in 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 [2], the European Union (EU) adopted the European Green Deal (a set of measures to achieve climate neutrality in 20502 ) and Switzerland passed the Climate strategy 2050 that targets climate neutrality in tween the emission reduction that is achieved if all countries implement their proposed measures and the emission reductions that are required to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement This is even true under the consideration of the impact that the COVID-19 global pandemic had on the world’s economy [3]. The situation in Switzerland is similar where the transport sector is with 32.4% of the GHG emissions the largest emitter [23]
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