With the rise of the number of electric vehicles, the installment of public charging infrastructure is becoming more prominent. In urban areas in which EV users rely on on-street parking facilities, the demand for public charging stations is high. Cities take on the role of implementing public charging infrastructure and are looking for efficient roll-out strategies. Municipalities generally reserve the parking spots next to charging stations to ensure their availability. Underutilization of these charging stations leads to increased parking pressure, especially during peak hours. The city of The Hague has therefore implemented daytime reservation of parking spots next to charging stations. These parking spots are exclusively available between 10:00 and 19:00 for electric vehicles and are accessible for other vehicles beyond these times. This paper uses a large dataset with information on nearly 40.000 charging sessions to analyze the implementation of the abovementioned scheme. An unique natural experiment was created in which charging stations within areas of similar parking pressure did or did not have this scheme implemented. Results show that implemented daytime charging 10-19 can restrict EV owners in using the charging station at times when they need it. An extension of daytime charging to 10:00-22:00 proves to reduce the hurdle for EV drivers as only 3% of charging sessions take place beyond this time. The policy still has the potential to relieve parking pressure. The paper contributes to the knowledge of innovative measures to stimulate the optimized rollout and usage of charging infrastructure.
At request of the MRA-E, G4 and ElaadNL HvA is researching the potential of Smart Charging. In this blog Youssef el Bouhassani pinpoints this potential.
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Smart charging protocols for electric vehicles can help avoid overload and instability in the electrical distribution network and can increase the proportion of locally generated solar energy used for charging. Our results show that the impact of smart charging depends heavily on the technical charging characteristics of the target vehicle.
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In the road transportation sector, CO2 emission target is set to reduce by at least 45% by 2030 as per the European Green Deal. Heavy Duty Vehicles contribute almost quarter of greenhouse gas emissions from road transport in Europe and drive majorly on fossil fuels. New emission restrictions creates a need for transition towards reduced emission targets. Also, increasing number of emission free zones within Europe, give rise to the need of hybridization within the truck and trailer community. Currently, in majority of the cases the trailer units do not possess any kind of drivetrain to support the truck. Trailers carry high loads, such that while accelerating, high power is needed. On the other hand, while braking the kinetic energy is lost, which otherwise could be recaptured. Thus, having a trailer with electric powertrain can support the truck during traction and can charge the battery during braking, helping in reducing the emissions and fuel consumption. Using the King-pin, the amount of support required by trailer can be determined, making it an independent trailer, thus requiring no modification on the truck. Given the heavy-duty environment in which the King-pin operates, the measurement design around it should be robust, compact and measure forces within certain accuracy level. Moreover, modification done to the King-pin is not apricated. These are also the challenges faced by V-Tron, a leading company in the field of services in mobility domain. The goal of this project is to design a smart King-pin, which is robust, compact and provides force component measurement within certain accuracy, to the independent e-trailer, without taking input from truck, and investigate the energy management system of the independent e-trailer to explore the charging options. As a result, this can help reduce the emissions and fuel consumption.
Based on the model outcomes, Houtlaan’s energy transition will likely result in congestion and curtailmentproblems on the local electricity grid within the next 5-7 years, possibly sooner if load imbalance between phasesis not properly addressed.During simulations, the issue of curtailment was observed in significant quantities on one cable, resulting in aloss of 8.292 kWh of PV production per year in 2030. This issue could be addressed by moving some of thehouses on the affects cable to a neighboring under-utilized cable, or by installing a battery system near the end ofthe affected cable. Due to the layout of the grid, moving the last 7 houses on the affected cable to the neighboringcable should be relatively simple and cost-effective, and help to alleviate issues of curtailment.During simulations, the issue of grid overloading occurred largely as a result of EV charging. This issue can bestbe addressed by regulating EV charging. Based on current statistics, the bulk of EV charging is expected to occurin the early evening. By prolonging these charge cycles into the night and early morning, grid overloading canlikely be prevented for the coming decade. However, such a control system will require some sort of infrastructureto coordinate the different EV charge cycles or will require smart EV chargers which will charge preferentiallywhen the grid voltage is above a certain threshold (i.e., has more capacity available).A community battery system can be used to increase the local consumption of produced electricity within theneighborhood. Such a system can also be complemented by charging EV during surplus production hours.However, due to the relatively high cost of batteries at present, and losses due to inefficiencies, such a systemwill not be financially feasible without some form of subsidy and/or unless it can provide an energy service whichthe grid operator is willing to pay for (e.g. regulating power quality or line voltage, prolonging the lifetime of gridinfrastructure, etc.).A community battery may be most useful as a temporary solution when problems on the grid begin to occur, untila more cost-effective solution can be implemented (e.g. reinforcing the grid, implementing an EV charge controlsystem). Once a more permanent solution is implemented, the battery could then be re-used elsewhere.The neighborhood of Houtlaan in Assen, the Netherlands, has ambitious targets for reducing the neighborhood’scarbon emissions and increasing their production of their own, sustainable energy. Specifically, they wish toincrease the percentage of houses with a heat pump, electric vehicle (EV) and solar panels (PV) to 60%, 70%and 80%, respectively, by the year 2030. However, it was unclear what the impacts of this transition would be onthe electricity grid, and what limitations or problems might be encountered along the way.Therefore, a study was carried out to model the future energy load and production patterns in Houtlaan. Thepurpose of the model was to identify and quantify the problems which could be encountered if no steps are takento prevent these problems. In addition, the model was used to simulate the effectiveness of various proposedsolutions to reduce or eliminate the problems which were identified
Een duurzaam energiesysteem op wijkniveau: met Smart Solar Charging wordt lokaal opgewekte zonne-energie in (deel)auto’s opgeslagen via een slim en dynamisch systeem (Vehicle2Grid). Wij onderzoeken de wenselijkheid van deze dienst voor gebruikers.Doel We onderzoeken wat de beste ervaringen zijn van de gebruikers van het energiesysteem Smart Solar Charging. Een Smart Solar Charging-systeem werkt pas bij een (deel)autosysteem van minimaal honderd auto’s. Dit kan een goede oplossing zijn voor het mobiliteitsprobleem in de steden. Maar wat is het voordeel voor de gebruikers? Wat verandert er in hun leven en hoe reageren zij hierop? Waar zijn zij bang voor? Wat verlangen ze? Zoals hierboven genoemd zijn dit belangrijke aspecten om ervoor te zorgen dat het nieuwe systeem daadwerkelijk kan slagen. Hoe ziet de ervaringswereld van mogelijke betrokkenen eruit? Het antwoord op deze vraag zal worden meegenomen in de ontwikkeling van de diensten. Resultaten Dit onderzoek loopt. Na afloop vind je hier een samenvatting van de resultaten. Op de projectwebsite lees je meer over Smart Solar Charging Looptijd 01 april 2017 - 01 april 2021 Aanpak Het lectoraat Co-Design van Hogeschool Utrecht doet onderzoek naar optimale gebruikersinteracties van de beoogde diensten. In het Design Innovation model van Ideo zijn drie elementen die de basis voor innovatie zijn. Waar andere partijen in het project zich met name richten op de zakelijke en technische kanten van het verhaal, onderzoekt het lectoraat Co-Design de human en dus desirability-kant, vanzelfsprekend in verbinding met de twee andere elementen.
