How the pace of adoption of electric vehicle smart charging impacts the energy system?

Calvillo, Christian F. (2021) How the pace of adoption of electric vehicle smart charging impacts the energy system? In: The 1st IAEE Online Conference, 2021-04-15 - 2021-06-09, Virtual.

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Abstract

The widespread roll-out of electric vehicles (EV) is one important action sought by governments around the world to tackle climate change and to improve air quality in urban centres. However, this extensive rollout of EVs is likely to bring important challenges to the energy system, potentially requiring new generation capacity and network reinforcements [1]. It has been recognised that the timing ('smart' vs 'dumb') of EV charging could potentially increase or mitigate the undesired impacts of the EV rollout [2]. In the case of the UK, it is expected that most cars and vans will be electric by 2050. Also, it is expected that by 2050, 75% of EVs will be charged in a smart way [3]. Currently, EVs represent around 7% of newly registered cars in the UK [4] and it is assumed that most of them are charged in a 'dumb' way, in free ‘on the street’ charging. So the path to reach the expected 75% smart charging is not clear. Many studies have been developed to analyse the impact of smart EV charging. However, most of them do not consider different smart charging adoption pathways and normally they only analyse the implications of a large penetration of EVs in the power sector, not considering, for example, the changes on emissions, fuel use and consumer costs. The work developed in this paper aims to provide insight on this issue, analysing the implications of a large penetration of EV under different smart chaging adoption pathways, using the UK TIMES energy system model. Preliminary results show that the speed in which smart charging is adopted can have important impacts on the level of network investments, and thus higher costs for the final consumer; where a slow adoption of smart charging could result in around 70% extra network investment costs, relative to a faster implementation of smart charging.

ORCID iDs

Calvillo, Christian F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5495-6601;