Power sector models featuring individual BEV profiles: Assessing the time-accuracy trade-off

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the trade-off between model accuracy and computational efficiency when including individual BEV profiles in power system models, proposing a threshold for the number of profiles needed for reliable results.

Contribution

It introduces a practical guideline for selecting the number of BEV profiles in power system modeling to balance accuracy and computational efficiency.

Findings

Including too few profiles distorts optimal solutions.

Beyond a certain number, additional profiles do not improve robustness.

A rule of thumb: one profile per 200,000-250,000 vehicles.

Abstract

Electrifying passenger cars will impact future power systems. To understand the challenges and opportunities that arise, it is necessary to reflect "sector coupling" in the modeling space. This paper focuses on a specific modeling approach that includes dozens of individual BEV profiles rather than one aggregated BEV profile. Although including additional BEV profiles increases model complexity and runtime, it avoids losing information in the aggregation process. We investigate how many profiles are needed to ensure the accuracy of the results and the extent to which fewer profiles can be traded for runtime efficiency gains. We also examine whether selecting specific profiles influences optimal results. We demonstrate that including too few profiles may result in distorted optimal solutions. However, beyond a certain threshold, adding more profiles does not significantly enhance the robustness of the results. More generally, for fleets of 5 to 20 million BEVs, we derive a rule of thumb consisting in including enough profiles such that each profile represents 200,000 to 250,000 vehicles, ensuring accurate results without excessive runtime.