A Networked Market Platform for Electric Vehicle Smart Charging

Lead Research Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Engineering

Abstract

The aim of this fellowship is to answer a key research question for power systems engineering: "As the UK and other countries move towards transport electrification, how can potentially millions of electric vehicles be successfully integrated into power system operations?"

Electric vehicles have become increasingly cost competitive, due to the cost of lithium-ion battery packs falling by approximately 77% over the last 6 years. The UK has over 100,000 electric vehicles, but it is estimated 26 million will be needed to meet 2050 emissions targets. The UK government is strongly supporting this, announcing a ban on the sale of diesel and petrol cars and vans after 2040, and the Faraday Challenge, £246 million towards electric vehicle battery development.

If electric vehicle charging is left uncoordinated, the large-scale adoption of electric vehicles is expected to cause significant power system challenges. Peak demand is expected to increase on the order of 20GW (approximately a 40% increase), necessitating new power plants and large-scale transmission infrastructure upgrades. A significant impact is also expected at the local distribution network level. The My Electric Avenue project identified that without smart charging, transport electrification will necessitate new investment to reinforce 32% of UK low voltage distribution network feeders (312,000 feeders).

This motivates the need for smart charging - coordinated scheduling of the charging times and powers of electric vehicles. However, existing strategies do not facilitate or incentivise this coordination, particularly at the local distribution network level. Top-down regimes that directly curtail charging impose an external cost on electric vehicle owners and manufacturers, and will slow adoption. Mechanisms that instead incentivise coordination are a promising approach, but require careful engineering design, since they influence power system operation in real time.

Through this fellowship, a networked market platform will be designed which can incentivise aggregate and localised coordination between millions of electric vehicles, while managing local power network voltage and thermal constraints in real time. This will be achieved by combining recent advances in multi-agent control, power engineering and networked matching market theory, to design new algorithms suitable for large-scale implementation. The project is supported by two industry partners, EDF Energy, the second largest electricity supplier in the UK with over 5 million customers, and Upside Energy, a UK virtual demand side response aggregator. The proposed market platform has the potential to provide significant value by alleviating the need for generation and transmission infrastructure investments, increasing network efficiency and increasing energy security.

Planned Impact

Through this fellowship, a market platform will be designed which can scale to incentivise coordination between potentially millions of electric vehicles, each with different owners. The key engineering challenge is the need to manage local power network voltage and thermal constraints in real time. A market platform which can meet this challenge has the potential to provide significant value by alleviating the need for generation and transmission infrastructure investments, increasing network efficiency and increasing energy security.

The fellowship will directly help address Industrial Strategy priority area 'Cheap and Clean Energy Technologies', by integrating multiple smart technologies (including smart meters, electric vehicles and active distribution network management) to create value for electric vehicle owners and the power system as a whole. The UK government's 2017 Green Paper "Building Our Industrial Strategy" specifically identifies the need for new technologies to prepare the UK for the shift to electric vehicles.

During the fellowship, the focus will be fundamental research and the creation of intellectual property with the industry partners, Upside Energy and EDF Energy, which can subsequently be commercialised.

The market platform is of direct commercial interest to Upside Energy and other demand side response aggregators, offering them the new opportunity to subscribe electric vehicles as a source of energy flexibility. In addition to wholesale energy trading and frequency balancing services, the platform will allow aggregators to offer new localised flexibility services to distribution network operators, to help manage voltage and thermal constraints.

EDF Energy and other electricity suppliers see transport electrification as an important growth area, and will be able to benefit from the market platform as a key technology for enabling the low-cost integration of electric vehicles into power systems. Without coordinated charging, electric vehicle integration would require significant power network reinforcement, and the costs for this would likely fall on their customers. As the UK's largest generator of low-carbon electricity, EDF Energy has a particular interest in the new market design, which could be used to incentivise coordinated electric vehicle charging to increase the utilisation of variable renewable generation. In addition, electricity suppliers could use the market platform to offer their customers new value-added charging, vehicle-to-grid and battery management services.

The market platform has the potential to make electric vehicles more attractive to prospective owners, who will be able to benefit from reduced charging costs depending on their level of flexibility. This could have flow on benefits across the emerging electric vehicle industry, contributing towards faster adoption and better utilisation of energy resources.

By helping to minimise the cost of integrating electric vehicles into power systems - and instead enabling them to be used as a power system resource - the project has the potential to significantly benefit the UK and other countries pursuing transport electrification. Ultimately, it could help reduce electricity costs for consumers and reduce the cost of meeting decarbonisation and air quality targets.

Publications

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Crozier C (2021) Capturing diversity in electric vehicle charging behaviour for network capacity estimation in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment

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Deakin M (2020) Control of Pervasive Domestic-Scale Inverters for Minimizing Total Feeder Power in Electric Power Systems Research

 
Description New local market designs allowing electric vehicle owners to trade peer-to-peer energy and distribution flexibility have been proposed:
- A new design for local distribution system flexibility markets has been proposed, to enable electricity consumers with small-scale flexibile resources (e.g. electric vehicles, heat-pumps) to offer energy flexibility to distribution system operators. The novel networked market structure accounts for distribution system operator-to-aggregator and aggregator-to-prosumer ICT infrastructure and contractual arrangements, which may limit which participants can negotiate transactions with one another. The proposed flexibility market is opt-in for consumers, who continue to obtain energy within the existing retail electricity market.
- A new probabilistic mechanism for managing uncertainty and network constraints within peer-to-peer energy markets has been proposed. Unlike existing approaches, a central authority is not required to check and approve transactions, maintaining scalability and autonomy. It has been demonstrated that with this new design, peer-to-peer markets can create value for both local energy resource owners and system operators. The new software tools developed for the project have been combined into the "Open Platform for Energy Networks (OPEN)", which provides an integrated open-source Python toolset for modelling, control and simulation of smart local energy systems. The framework combines distributed energy resource modelling (e.g. for PV generation sources, battery energy storage systems, electric vehicles), energy market modelling, power flow simulation and multi-period optimisation for scheduling flexible energy resources.
- A study was completed of the overall impact that charging a large electric vehicle fleet would have on Great Britain's power system, taking into account the spatial heterogeneity of vehicle use, electricity demand, and network structure. It was shown that smart charging can simultaneously eliminate the need for additional generation infrastructure required with 100% electric vehicle adoption, while also reducing the percentage of distribution networks which would require reinforcement from 28% to 9%. This demonstrates the large potential value of electric vehicle smart charging for the UK.
Exploitation Route The market designs and software tools developed could be used as the basis for developers to build digital plaforms for distribution system operators interested in the potential of managing local demand constraints by obtaining flexibility from a supply chain of aggregators and individual consumers with small-scale flexible energy resources. OPEN is open source and available for the academic research community to use and extend for smart local energy system research. It is been developed to be modular and extensible, with users able to extend its libraries of resource models, networks and market arrangements so that it can be used for new applications.

The assessment of the overall impact that charging electric vehicles will have on Great Britain's power system, and how this will impact on local distribution network reinforcement requirements, provides evidence supporting the value of electric vehicle smart charging, which is relevant for policymakers considering electricity market reforms, National Grid and distribution network operators as they prepare for increased numbers of electric vehicles and for aggregators developing electric vehicle smart charging and vehicle-to-grid market offerings.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Energy

URL https://www.researchgate.net/project/A-Networked-Market-Platform-for-Electric-Vehicle-Smart-Charging
 
Description The project has resulted in papers published in top-ranked power systems and energy journals. There has been good engagement with the project partners, and I have been able engage with a broader group of experts from industry and government in the UK, EU and US. The highest impact engagement activity has been a workshop organised with funding from an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account Award (£5k), the "Oxford Workshop on Flexible Federated Energy Systems", which brought together 28 representatives from industry and academia working on market design for smart energy systems to discuss future research challenges and opportunities. Additional high-impact engagement activities have included: - A week-long delegation to California organised by the British Consulate. The aim was to establish new collaborations focused on transport electrification and vehicle-to-grid technology development. Through this visit, I've established new relationships with a broader range of industry and government organisations in the UK and the US. - Invited to present a seminar on 'Decentralized Views of Future Electricity Markets' at the University of Cambridge Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, which was attended by leading researchers from engineering, economics and mathematics working on electricity market design. - Invited to present on panel sessions at the INFORMS 2019 and 2020 Annual Meetings, 2019 and 2020 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, and to chair panel sessions at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in 2020 and 2021. This has helped disseminate the research to the international power engineering and operations research communities. - Invited to contribute a chapter on "How can P2P energy trading platforms be designed to create value for both prosumers and system operators?" to a report for the Solar Trade Association on "Trading Sunlight: Prospects for Peer to Peer Energy Trading". - I have become a regular invitee of the Energy Futures Group organised by Professor Dieter Helm. This group meets monthly bringing together 20 to 30 stakeholders from industry, government and academia to discuss pressing energy policy questions under the Chatham House Rule. Finally, the project has led to significant follow up funding: - I am principal investigator on the project "EPSRC-SFI: Blockchain transactions in the electricity industry: beyond tokenised energy" ( EP/T028564/1, £177k). This is a collaborative project with Dr Paul Cuffe at University College Dublin. The project aims to look at the potential for blockchain smart contracts to offer value in local energy systems, focusing on the potential for enabling the bottom-up formation of hedging arrangements and federated power plants. - I am co-investigator and co-lead on the EPSRC project "Energy Revolution Research Consortium - Plus - EnergyREV - Market Design for Scaling up Local Clean Energy Systems" (EP/S031901/1, £475k). This is part of the multi-institution and interdisciplinary EnergyREV consortium (https://www.energyrev.org.uk/). The project will build on the novel tools and methods developed through the fellowship to investigate how changes to the UK's system level energy markets and regulatory arrangements could support the smart local energy - I am principal investigator of an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account Award, "Perth West as a Case Study for the Value of Greenfield Smart Local Energy Systems" (32k). This project is a collaboration with the John Dewar Lamberkin Trust (the developers of Perth West) and the Perth and Kinross Council. Perth West includes plans for electric vehicle smart charging and vehicle-to-grid at the Broxen Mobility Centre, coordinated with local demand and generation from the Dupplin Renewable Energy Company (DRECO) Energy Park. - I am principal investigator of a second EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account Award, "Assessing options for a smart, resilient and low-carbon multi-vector energy system in the Scottish Borders" (22k). This project is a collaboration with the Scottish Borders Council, and will investigate the Scottish Borders as a case study for integrated multi-vector smart local energy system design, and will make use of the modelling tools and electric vehicle coordination solutions developed by the fellowship. - I am co-investigator of a third EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account Award, "Accelerating Net Zero Edinburgh: Infrastructure & Place" (77k). This project is a collaboration with the Edinburgh City Council, and aims to help deliver the Net Zero Edinburgh 2030 strategy. I am leading a sub-project on Energy & Future Transport, which will make use of methods and software developed through the fellowship to help design electric vehicle infrastructure and coordination strategies considering the city's local distribution network and renewable generation assets. - I am co-investigator on an EPSRC project "Data-driven exploration of the carbon emissions impact of grid energy storage deployment and dispatch" (£1.0m) which is a collaboration with the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. The project aims to demonstrate the carbon emissions savings possible by optimally locating and operating storage to avoid curtailment of renewables and additional fossil fuel generation. Research from the fellowship on Great Britain power system modelling and battery storage control are directly relevant for this project. - The findings from the project have led to a new IEEE Power & Energy Society Task force on Grid-Interactive Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure. I helped found this task force, and it is led by Dr Constance Crozier (now Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech), who I co-supervised and collaborated with during the fellowship. This task force will run for the next two years, and aims to bring together reserach to help inform electric vehicle policy, regulation, technology standards and buisness models.
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Energy
Impact Types Economic

Policy & public services

 
Description Data-driven exploration of the carbon emissions impact of grid energy storage deployment and dispatch
Amount £1,007,581 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/W027321/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 11/2022 
End 10/2024
 
Title Open Platform for Energy Networks (OPEN) 
Description The Open Platform for Energy Networks (OPEN) provides a python toolset for modelling, simulation and optimisation of smart local energy systems. The framework combines distributed energy resource modelling (e.g. for PV generation sources, battery energy storage systems, electric vehicles), energy market modelling, power flow simulation and multi-period optimisation for scheduling flexible energy resources. We continue to extend OPEN as it is used on new projects. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2019 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact OPEN is currently being use for modelling, design and testing smart energy system control strategies and market designs for a number of projects including the "Vehicle-to-Grid Oxford (V2GO)" demonstration project, "EnergyREV - Market Design for Scaling up Local Clean Energy Systems" project, and EPSRC IAA projects "Perth West as a Case Study for the Value of Greenfield Smart Local Energy Systems" and "Assessing options for a smart, resilient and low-carbon multivector energy system in the Scottish Borders". 
 
Description IEEE Power & Energy Society Taskforce on Grid-Interactive Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Helped found a new IEEE Power & Energy Society Task force on Grid-Interactive Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure. The research from the project was used to motivate the need for the task force.

The aims of the task force are:
• Investigate the current status of the grid-interactive EV charging infrastructures, including voltage levels, charging power, business models, capabilities, and associated regulatory rules on EV charging infrastructure integration with utility grid systems.
• Work on identifying emerging challenges associated with the integration of electric vehicle charging - as both fixed load and potential service providers. We aim to classify the different technologies available by voltage level and ownership model, and in each case identify any economic, regulatory, or technical barriers faced. We suggest that the focus of this task force be on the interaction between electric vehicle chargers and the power grid. Therefore, we propose that the internal electronics of both the electric vehicle and charging equipment is not considered beyond how they affect the controllability of charging load.
• Review and explore state-of-the-art methodologies for smoothly integrating EV charging infrastructures into grid operation as well as business models allowing system/market operators to make full use of the flexibilities and controllabilities of EV charging infrastructures.
• Provide recomendations on business/market models, regulatory roles and software development to the market operator,regulatory department and industry.

The task force has 50+ participants from a wide range of countries and from both academia and industry.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description INFORMS Annual Meeting 2021 - Chaired Panel Session on "Market Design for Smart Local Energy Systems" 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited to chair a panel session on "Market Design for Smart Local Energy Systems" at the INFORMS 2021 Annual Meeting (held virtually). The INFORMS Annual Meeting is the main gathering of the The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. The aim of the session was to bring together researchers working at the forefront of energy market design to discuss the state-of-the-art and identify impactful research directions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://meetings.informs.org/wordpress/anaheim2021/schedule
 
Description Seminar for the Iran Local Energy Market Committee 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Presentation of research to the Iran Local Energy Market Committee in collaboration with the Iran Future Energy Market Forum and Iran Energy Agency. 30+ attendees showed interest with lots of questions at end of presentation.

Outcomes:
- New acdemic collaboration established with Dr Mohsen Khorasany and Dr Amin Shokri Gzafroudi on the design of integrated markets for peer-to-peer energy trading and distribution system flexibility.
- Asked to present a webinar for the second season of the Iran Local Energy Market Forum on tools, libraries, and softwares related to modelling local energy markets
- Asked to contribute two book chapters for a new book being published by Springer, "Trading in Local Energy Markets and Energy Communities: Concepts, Structures and Technologies"
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUJyd-CzaE