Utilization of Electric Vehicles for Vehicle-to-Grid Services: Progress and Perspectives

Abstract

With every passing second, we witness the effect of the global environmental impact of fossil fuels and carbon emissions, to which nations across the globe respond by coming up with ambitious goals to become carbon-free and energy-efficient. At the same time, electric vehicles (EVs) are developed as a possible solution to reach this ambitious goal of making a cleaner environment and facilitating smarter transportation modes. This excellent idea of shifting towards an entirely EV-based mobility industry and economy results in a range of issues that need to be addressed. The issues range from ramping up the electricity generation for the projected increase in consumption to developing an infrastructure that is large enough to support the higher demand for electricity that arises due to the market penetration of EVs. Vehicle to grid (V2G) is a concept that is largely in a testing phase in the current scenario. However, it appears to offer a solution to the issues created by a mobility sector that the constantly growing EV fleet will dominate. Furthermore, the integration of EVs with the grid seems to offer various cost-wise and environment-wise benefits while assisting the grid by tapping into the idle energy of parked EVs during peak hours. This review aims to present some of the possible ancillary service potentials of such a system while also discussing the potential challenges, impacts, and future market penetration capabilities of V2G technology.

A comprehensive review on electric vehicles smart charging: Solutions, strategies, technologies, and challenges

“…The on-board chargers are deployed for low-power AC charging, whereas the off-board chargers are used for high-power AC charging and DC charging [175]. From the viewpoint of charge direction, there are two unidirectional or bidirectional charger types [21]. The second one is needed for providing ancillary services by EVSC.…”

“…The presence of EVs in electricity markets leads to diversification in such markets and provides new economic opportunities [21]. However, like other small-scale energy providers, two barriers exist to the participation of V2G in electricity markets.…”

“…There are some other real-world V2G projects, including Clinton Global Initiative School Bus Demo (which is located in the US and provides frequency regulation and load shifting services), Vehicle-tocoffee-The Mobility House (which is located in Germany and provides load shifting), Denmark V2G (which provides frequency regulation service), Powerloop: Domestic V2G Demonstrator Project (which is located in the UK and provides arbitrage and load shifting services) Utrecht V2G charge hubs (which is located in the Netherlands and provides arbitrage service), V2GO (which is located in the UK and provides load shifting, frequency regulation, and arbitrage services), Piha vehicle-to-home (V2H)trial (which is located in New Zealand and provides load shifting service), Namibia V2G (which is located in Namibia and provides load shifting service), and VIGIL (which is located in the UK and provides reserve and load shifting services) [21].…”

“…As mentioned, in addition to neutralizing the negative impacts of nightly charge, EVSC contributes to improving the power grid characteristics through ancillary services [20]. Different ancillary services such as power quality services, grid loss reduction, voltage (or reactive power) support, frequency response services, constraint management, etc., may be provided by EVSC [21]. For proving ancillary services by EVs (through EVSC), both vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and grid-to-vehicle (G2V) strategies are needed to enable bidirectional power exchanges [22].…”

Value of Optimal Trip and Charging Scheduling of Commercial Electric Vehicle Fleets with Vehicle-to-Grid in Future Low Inertia Systems

“…A recent review of progress in utilizing EVs for ancillary services is presented in [12] and is done so from several perspectives, including state of the art technology and control methods. An extensive review of charging and discharging strategies, including various objective functions for optimising EVs in the power system, has been carried out in [13].…”