Jens P. Ilg

Improving Electric Vehicle Charging Coordination Through Area Pricing

Meeting charging demands of large electric vehicle fleets will raise electrical load significantly and may pose challenges for todays power system. Appropriate coordination of electric vehicle charging can reduce these threats. Acknowledging the interdependency between the transportation and the power system created by electric vehicles, we develop a charging coordination model based on German mobility data. We extend the prior work by explicitly accounting for both the temporal and the spatial dimension. We are thus able to analyze the loads from price-based EV fleet charging while at the same time accounting for distribution grid constraints. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic charging strategy based on limited trip and price information. Our results show that the sole use of time-based electricity prices for the coordination of electric vehicle charging produces high load spikes independent of the charging strategies and power levels. These peaks are induced by simultaneous charging activity and may cause stability problems within distribution grids in residential areas. To mitigate these load spikes, we introduce a spatial price component that reflects local capacity utilization. These local prices induce both a temporal and spatial shift of charging activity that mitigates the load spikes.

Energy Informatics - Current and Future Research Directions

Due to the increasing importance of producing and consuming energy more sustainably, Energy Informatics (EI) has evolved into a thriving research area within the CS/IS community. The article attempts to characterize this young and dynamic field of research by describing current EI research topics and methods and provides an outlook of how the field might evolve in the future. It is shown that two general research questions have received the most attention so far and are likely to dominate the EI research agenda in the coming years: How to leverage information and communication technology (ICT) to (1) improve energy efficiency, and (2) to integrate decentralized renewable energy sources into the power grid. Selected EI streams are reviewed, highlighting how the respective research questions are broken down into specific research projects and how EI researchers have made contributions based on their individual academic background.

Benchmarking electric vehicle charging control strategies

Electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to become an important part of individual mobility. In order to reduce CO2 emissions and release the full potential for sustainable mobility, EVs need to be charged with energy from renewable energy sources (RES). We employ a deterministic linear optimization approach with different coordination objectives for each simulation scenario. The objectives are to minimize the individual average charging costs, maximize the average use of wind power or minimize the average load factor for the charging times of each EV customer. Customers have real life driving profiles from the German mobility panel and are distinguished in employees and retired with their respective driving behavior. We find that the wind power share used for charging can be nearly doubled for both groups under the respective strategy. Average costs are increased in comparison to the cost oriented strategy but are considerably lower as in the uncoordinated charging case.

A Revenue Management Approach for Efficient Electric Vehicle Charging Coordination

Ambitious goals of electric vehicle (EV) penetration may conflict with the capabilities of todays power system. Especially simultaneous charging at home may lead to significant load spikes or grid stability issues. Prior research has identified the need for appropriate coordination approaches. This research focuses mostly on coordinating system loads ignoring local grid constraints. The suggested mechanisms either are centralized control approaches ignoring user preferences or based on the electrical energy cost. We propose to complement these approaches by using mechanisms from revenue management for perishable assets. First, we formalize charging coordination as a minimal revenue management problem and then derive an appropriate advance sale mechanism. By accounting for heterogeneous customer segments, this approach can achieve a socially efficient allocation of available charging capacity. Using a local neighborhood scenario, we evaluate the impact of such an approach.