Flexible Charging, Energy Storage and Smart Energy Management for Renewable Mobility in a City

Abstract

Large increases in renewable electricity production and electrified mobility are straining the electricity infrastructure. To counter this, increased flexibility within the electricity system is added by adding energy storage systems and demand side management (DSM). The CleanMobilEnergy (CME) project in Arnhem is a solution put to practice, where flexible electric vehicle (EV) charging and cold ironing (shore-to-ship electricity) are supplied by a battery energy storage system (BESS) and a local solar park managed with an integrated energy management system (iEMS). The goal of this thesis is to find out the potential of Arnhem’s CME project for achieving optimal EV self-sufficiency and for reducing CO2 emissions and peak grid absorption. A multi-objective Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is developed to simulate the CME project, using data from the CME stakeholders, and comprises 24 different scenarios. The different scenarios allow for the analysis of the added value of flexible EV charging and the BESS separately and together. Additionally, scenarios of a 2030 situation with increased EV charging are added to investigate how the situation changes as the CME project continues. Finally, different optimisation algorithms are used to show the different potentials of the project. The results show that the iEMS of the CME project can reduce CO2 emissions by 13% (89 tonnes), provide 89.6% self-sufficiency for electric vehicles and can reduce peak grid load by 14.7% from 1027 kW to 876 kW. When looking at the 2030 scenarios, the CME project can reduce CO2 emissions by 35.8% (924 tonnes), reach 56% EV self-sufficiency and reduce the peak load by 40% from 4107 kW to 2452 kW. However, the CME project cannot reach all these goals at the same time, because they require different optimisation algorithms. The CO2 emissions in practice cannot be reduced as far, due to the additional peak load the greenhouse gas (GHG) optimisation adds to the grid. However, the other optimisations also reduce CO2 emissions by 11.5% in the present-day and 25.7% in the 2030 scenario. As EV charging increases over the next decade, the BESS becomes less important in the CME system compared to flexible charging. This thesis demonstrates that the CME system as planned can currently reach a high degree of EV self-sufficiency, while reducing CO2 emissions and peak grid absorption. Future research can investigate whether a larger BESS or connecting planned wind turbines to the CME system can keep this going until 2030.