On the Complementarity of Shared Electric Mobility and Renewable Energy Communities

TL;DR

This paper explores how shared electric mobility services and renewable energy communities can coordinate their operations to reduce costs and stress on the power grid, using a novel optimization model in a low-voltage network.

Contribution

It introduces a new mixed-integer second order cone programming model for long-term EV fleet planning that integrates renewable energy communities and vehicle-to-grid capabilities.

Findings

Coordination reduces yearly costs by up to 11.3%.

It decreases substation transformer stress by 46%.

The model demonstrates economic and grid performance improvements.

Abstract

Driven by the ongoing energy transition, shared mobility service providers are emerging actors in electrical power systems which aim to shift combustion-based mobility to electric paradigm. In the meantime, Energy Communities are deployed to enhance the local usage of distributed renewable production. As both ators share the same goal of satisfying the demand at the lowest cost, they could take advantage of their complementarity and coordinate their decisions to enhance each other operation. This paper presents an original Mixed-Integer Second Order Cone Programming long-term Electric Vehicle fleet planning optimization problem that integrates the coordination with a Renewable Energy Community and Vehicle-to-Grid capability. This model is used to assess the economic, energy, and grid performances of their collaboration in a 21 buses low-voltage distribution network. Key results show that, both actors coordination can help reducing the yearly cost up to 11.3 % compared to their stand-alone situation and that it may reduce the stress on the substation transformer by 46 % through the activation of the inherent EVs flexibility when subject to peak penalties from the grid operator.