On the business value of ICT-controlled plug-in electric vehicle charging in California

The increasing penetration of variable renewable energy, such as wind and solar, requires the deployment of large scale energy storage or dynamic demand side management. Leveraging the intrinsic energy storage potential of certain electric loads could be the key for an efficient transition to green power generation. Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) are about to be introduced on a large scale. In this paper, we investigate the savings potential of electricity retailers resulting from the ability to control the charging behavior of a fleet of PEVs using Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This savings potential is important as it could jumpstart the development of advanced control infrastructures for dynamic demand side management. The paper makes three major contributions: first, it applies a novel car usage model based on data from the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). Second, it develops and evaluates several charging scheduling algorithms with low computational requirements. Third, it identifies several key parameters influencing the relative and absolute savings potential of ICT-controlled PEV charging. We obtain a relative savings potential of up to 45%. The absolute yearly savings per PEV, however, are rather small, which could limit the economic incentives of electricity retailers to deploy the required infrastructure.