Performance Assessment of UK's Cellular Network for Vehicle to Grid Energy Trading: Opportunities for 5G and Beyond

Abstract

The proliferation of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) and advances in high-speed low latency communication networks redefine the relationships between electricity providers and endusers. A group of PEV owners, coordinated by an aggregator, can participate in ancillary energy markets to stabilize electricity grids and, in return, receive payments for services rendered. However, PEVs are typically parked across a dispersed region possibly with diverse signal strength and data rates. Vehicleto-Grid (V2G) applications have tight latency (e.g., 500 ms to 2 seconds) and packet-loss requirements, hence, the supporting communication infrastructure should be carefully evaluated for real-world implementations. In this paper, we assess the performance of the internet-based 4G cellular network in the United Kingdom to evaluate these key metrics. We develop a low cost and easy deployable testbed platform to collect and analyze the latency and packet loss rate of different package sizes, transport protocols, and signal strengths. Due to availability of hardware resources and city-wide coverage of 4G networks, a single parking lot to aggregator scenario is emulated. The results show that in most cases current 4G network can deliver packets less than 500ms which is required in fast frequency response applications in the UK. On the other hand, for more complex scenarios such as multi-aggregator to distributed clients, there is a need to use 5G and beyond to meet the latency requirements. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first study focusing on the field testing and assessment of an actual internet-based communication network for V2G applications.

Impact of Communication System Characteristics on Electric Vehicle Grid Integration: A Large-Scale Practical Assessment of the UK’s Cellular Network for the Internet of Energy

“…A substantial part of the latency can be attributable to the 4G link in this calculation. It was observed in our earlier work [27,29] that the Wi-Fi link latency can constitute up to 50 ms of the total latency value. However, the number of PEVs connected to the Wi-Fi access point has a significant impact on this figure.…”

“…In our preliminary work [27], we developed a V2G test bed for a charging station to test the performance of the proposed communication infrastructure. The communication infrastructure included a Wi-Fi link within the charging station between PEVs and an EVSE, a 4G cellular network between the EVSE and the base station, and fiber optic internet between the base station and grid's control room.…”

Impact of Compression and Small Cell Deployment on NB-IoT Devices Coverage and Energy Consumption with a Realistic Simulation Model

“…In this research work, we have compared wireless last-mile communication technologies as shown in Table 7 , based on estimated latency and data rate values that can be found from the literature and previous research work [ 23 , 25 ]. According to the references [ 23 , 26 , 27 ] MCL (signal strength) can impact significantly on the value of the latency. The latency for two standard protocols—the transmission control protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP)—have been simulated for a smart grid IoT network in [ 28 ].…”

Comprehensive practical evaluation of wired and wireless internet base smart grid communication

“…In recent years, the participation of plug-in electrical vehicle (PEV) batteries in the ancillary services market, also known as V2G, has gained popularity as the use of PEVs enhance system efficiency, while providing monetary benefits to PEV owners [5]. In a V2G application, each PEV battery is charged and discharged within a time window according to real-time automatic generation control signals [17]. Regarding wireless networks such as 3G and 4G, the latency assessment has been compared in [19], which reports an average latency value of 35 ms for 4G and a latency of 45 ms for 3G.…”