On the Complementarity of Shared Electric Mobility and Renewable Energy Communities
For operators of shared electric mobility and energy communities, this work demonstrates the economic and grid benefits of coordinating their operations, though the results are case-study specific.
This paper proposes a coordinated operational planning framework for shared electric mobility and renewable energy communities, showing via a Belgian case study that coordination reduces yearly costs by up to 15.6% and substation transformer stress by 30.8% compared to stand-alone operation.
Driven by the ongoing energy transition, shared mobility providers are emerging actors in power systems aiming to shift combustion-based vehicles towards electric ones. Meanwhile Energy Communities are deployed to promote investment in distributed renewable production and enhance the local usage of it. The complementarity in their electrical demand, enhanced by a coordinated operational planning, can help both actors reduce the electricity supply cost. Considering this original collaboration, this paper presents a Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming problem which jointly optimizes the EC members and EVs flexibility usage to take advantage of the local production. Besides economic benefits comparison, authors analyses the impact of grid tariffs and bi-directional charging on the distribution network. Results from a Belgian mobility case study show that coordination can help reducing the yearly cost up to 15.6% compared to their stand-alone situation and that it may reduce by 30.8% the stress on the substation transformer when subject to peak penalties from the grid operator.