EVA

The EVA project aims to find innovative solutions to coordinate the territorial infrastructures required for the emerging mainstream technologies in road mobility: Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs). In a local and regional European context, that aims to a decentralized renewable energy system, the EVA project will explore and assess how: (i) future diffusion of CAVs would affect urban planning and design, particularly under a sharing economy framework (SAV); (ii) management of peaks in power demand, due to a wide diffusion of electric mobility in the smart grid system, by exploiting vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) power strategies as well as accounting for a decentralized renewable energy production system; (iii) optimize the EVs charging stations infrastructures bypassing investment in fast obsolescing ones; (iv) define new business models; and (v) define guidelines to support the regional institutions.

The shift towards electric mobility is paramount to increase sustainability and energy efficiency of passenger road transportation, that today accounts for half of the energy demand worldwide and 20% of greenhouse gases emissions. Although a sustainable technology and in rapid growth (in 2017, +54% of sold vehicles than in 2016 [IEA]), electric vehicles (EVs) will face limitations if the electrical grid infrastructure is not adapted accounting for their upcoming needs. Specifically, low and medium voltage distribution systems are uncapable to accommodate the high level of demand of the simultaneous charging of many EVs. Solutions traditionally advocated in the existing literature are charging algorithms to schedule and smooth the total charging demand. Algorithms can be classified in passive charging, unidirectional smart charging, and bi-directional smart charging [Knezovi?]. Passive charging consists in scheduling the charge of EVs by exploiting input information from the drivers, like desired charging demand and deadline. They are currently implemented in private and public charging stations to, e.g., peak-shave the demand, avoid peak electricity tariff, and respect statutory/physical limits on the power flow at the grid connection point. Unidirectional smart charging schedules the charge by minimizing a cost function (typically economical), on the basis of, e.g., an incentive signal broadcasted by the operator that reflects the retailing electricity price or states of grid congestions. Bidirectional smart charging, or vehicle-to-grid (V2G), includes the notion of bidirectional power flow, allowing EVs to discharge and inject into the power network when necessary. Smart charging is implemented at the level of pilot and demonstration projects, e.g., [ACES], and have become a key focus for aggregators, which can exploit their inherent flexibility to trade in ancillary services markets, like primary frequency regulation, reserve markets and for voltage regulation, see e.g. [Knezovic 2014]. Although essential to peak-shave and schedule charging demand, smart charging strategies might still fail if the total energy demand of EVs is too high; for this reason, algorithms to determine the most suitable locations in the grid and power capacity ratings of future charging stations were considered in the existing literature, e.g. [Lin, Awasthi].

The project, in two pilot cases, will test and prove solutions in the view of their scalability and replicability in EU28 countries. The pilots have been selected for their high investments in e-mobility and willingness to invest in AV in the next years and they have dimensionsmanageable by the partnership. Thus, they have been considered the perfect test bed for better understanding specificities that can be then generalized to the entire European territory.

Technological goals:

Manage peaks in power demand, due to a wide diffusion of electric mobility in the smart grid system, by exploiting vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) power strategies as well as accounting for a decentralized renewable energy production system;

Assess the impact of bidirectional charging thanks to the data acquired during the experimentation phase.

Scientific goals:

Understand current and future dynamics of mobility and define their plausibility on the basis of a participatory multicriteria analysis;

Define guidelines to support the regional institutions. Active engagement of local stakeholders and communities will allow highlighting the pros and cons of different scenarios and favoring later adoption and/or acceptance of the envisioned infrastructure solutions.

Economic goals:

Define new business models that will be necessary for the infrastructure in the future;

Help the European economy to be at the forefront of integrating the emerging mainstream technologies in road mobility: Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs).