Impacts of EVs on power system operation: Guangdong case, China

In addition to reduce oil consumption and pollution emissions, electric vehicles (EVs) show great potential for the power system as flexible load. For this reason, it provokes our interest to investigate the extent to which EVs could contribute to the power system management from the power system operator´s perspective. To achieve this goal, a unit commitment (UC) model for the power system operation that considers EVs charging is used. A case study in Guangdong province is carried out to quantify the impact of EVs in terms of generation mix by fuel type, demand profiles with EVs, variable generation cost of the system, and power purchase cost for grid companies. Result shows that in an economic dispatch context, controlled charging could reduce the variable generation cost, and the purchase cost for grid companies. At the meantime, the high coal consumption due to controlled charging can be observed, which conflicts with the low-carbon electricity transition policy in China. In addition, the controlled charging reduces the peak load by 5.77% compared with uncontrolled charging, when there is 2 Million EVs. While the impact of control charging on reducing peak load is uncertain yet, the grid companies probably face peak load challenges in both controlled and uncontrolled charging when there is high penetration level of EVs.