Using electric vehicles to mitigate imbalance requirements associated with an increased penetration of wind generation

The integration of variable renewable generation sources continues to be a significant area of focus for power system planning. Renewable portfolio standards and initiatives to reduce the dependency on foreign energy sources drive much of the deployment. Unfortunately, renewable energy generation sources like wind and solar tend to be highly variable in nature. To counter the energy imbalance caused by this variability, wind generation often requires additional balancing resources to compensate for the variability in the electricity production. With the expected electrification of transportation, electric vehicles may offer a new load resource for meeting all, or part, of the imbalance created by the renewable generation. This paper investigates a regulation-services-based battery charging method on a population of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to meet the power imbalance requirements associated with the introduction of 11 GW of additional wind generation into the Northwest Power Pool. It quantifies the number of vehicles required to meet the imbalance requirements under various charging assumptions.