Research Projects
Integrated Modelling and Analysis of Power and Transportation Systems
Overview
Liberalized markets, increased utilization of distributed energy resources as well as increasing congestion problems in urban agglomerations represent challenges for power as well as transportation system planning and operation. To study future impacts of recent technology trends new models are required. Due to rising environmental awareness and political realization of energy dependencies initiate upcoming vehicle technologies like Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV). They will use grid electricity as fuel, especially in highly congested urban areas. In fact, those vehicles are also planned to be used for grid ancillary services, e.g. spinning reserve or frequency regulation. Furthermore, as urban areas have already a high demand for electricity, strategies and models have to be developed for emergency cases of the grid (intelligent load management, black out restoration) Blatantly, they will introduce close interactions between the power and transportation system and issues as well as advantages resulting from these interactions will be studied in this project.
The investigations start with the general modeling approach of Energy Hubs and apply it with Agent Technology to grid problems. Utilizing the approach for PHEV, Grid entities (generators, loads, DER, etc.) and Smart Grid Devices, Agent technology is used for the communication between as well as optimization within the entities. Within this scope, the future infrastructure of the electricity grid is redesigned to integrate PHEV, which are regarded as mobile loads as well as storages depending on their time behavior. Therefore, the project is carried out with the Institute for Transportation Planning and Systems (IVT, ETH Zurich) and an agent based transportation simulation (Mat-Sim). By simulating the transport behavior of urban areas and using it as input to the electricity optimization model, new load patterns, load management schemes and available storage for the power system can be investigated. Using the output of the electricity model as an input for Mat-Sim the transportation behavior is adjusted based on the individual utility each agent has achieved. Iterations will lead to an equilibrium mirroring the actual behavior of agents in the transportation as well as the power system. To model the PHEV Agents more realistically, collaboration with the Aero Chemistry and Combustion Systems Laboratory (ACL, ETH Zurich) is planned.
Goals of the project
The project has several goals to be achieved:
- The entities participating in the electricity network need to be modeled based on the Energy Hub approach. Typical entities would be the PHEV, electricity and gas network nodes, the electricity and gas network, loads as well as the Smart Grid Devices managing the plugged PHEV.
- Studying load and storage patterns of the PHEV
- Developing intelligent load and storage management strategies for the demand / supply of the PHEV incorporating a price behavior, detrimental as input to the transportation simulation and optimization.
- Revealing congestions in supply due to grid or generation constraints
- Depending on the equilibrium state of the transportation simulation, patterns for black out restoration with the help of PHEV will be studied.
- A balancing power market could be investigated where aggregated amounts of PHEV bid into an ancillary services market, maximizing profit while meeting system constraints.
- Validation of the system tool through case studies for greater Zurich area
References
[1] M.D. Galus and G. Andersson. Demand Management of Grid-Connected PHEVs. In IEEE Conference on global Sustainable Energy Infrstructure (Energy 2030), Atlanta, GA,USA, 2008.
[2] J. Tomic and W. Kempton. Using fleets of electric-drive vehicles for grid support. Journal of Power Sources, 168(2):459–469, 2007.
[3] W. Kempton and J. Tomic. Vehicle-to-grid power implementation: From stabilizing the grid to supporting large-scale renewable energy. Journal of Power Sources, 144(1):280–294, 2005.
[4] S. W. Hadley. Evaluating the impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on regional electricity supplies. In Bulk Power System Dynamics and Control, Charleston, SC, USA, 2007.
[5] K. Schneider, C. Gerkensmeyer, M. Kintner-Meyer, and R. Fletcher. Impact assessment of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on pacific northwest distribution systems. In IEEE Power and Energy Society 2008 General Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA, 2008.
[6] M. Geidl and G. Andersson. Optimal power flow of multiple energy carriers. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 22(1):145–155, 2007.
VoFEN PHEV workshop 11.10.2010
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