A Networked Market Platform for Electric Vehicle Smart Charging

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.

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.