Analyzing the Impact of Electric Vehicles on Local Energy Systems using Digital Twins

TL;DR

This paper uses a digital twin of a local energy system to analyze how electric vehicles increase electricity demand and how renewable energy integration can mitigate this impact.

Contribution

It introduces a digital twin-based approach to evaluate electric vehicle impact on local energy systems and explores mitigation strategies using renewable energy sources.

Findings

Electric vehicles cause a 78% increase in annual electricity demand from home charging.

Integrating photovoltaic and battery storage systems can significantly reduce the increased demand.

The digital twin approach enables detailed analysis of sector coupling effects on local grids.

Abstract

The electrification of the transportation and heating sector, the so-called sector coupling, is one of the core elements to achieve independence from fossil fuels. As it highly affects the electricity demand, especially on the local level, the integrated modeling and simulation of all sectors is a promising approach for analyzing design decisions or complex control strategies. This paper analyzes the increase in electricity demand resulting from sector coupling, mainly due to integrating electric vehicles into urban energy systems. Therefore, we utilize a digital twin of an existing local energy system and extend it with a mobility simulation model to evaluate the impact of electric vehicles on the distribution grid level. Our findings indicate a significant rise in annual electricity consumption attributed to electric vehicles, with home charging alone resulting in a 78% increase. However, we demonstrate that integrating photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems can effectively mitigate this rise.