Spatio-temporal electric vehicle charging optimization considering distribution grid constraints and flexible electricity prices

Because of the increasing expansion of renewable energy sources with volatile generation, the importance of flexible consumers – like battery electric vehicles – that can react to different feed-in situations will increase in the future electricity system. As a result of the zonal electricity price systems currently implemented in Europe, this flexibility can lead to a considerable simultaneity in electricity demand and result in significant grid congestions, as there are single price signals for each bidding zone without considering the regional distribution of supply and demand. This paper therefore presents an approach to a techno-economic analysis of different types of load-shifting in the traffic sector by comparing the biddingzone-specific charging optimization to a grid-aware spatio-temporal optimization. By shifting both time and location of charging processes within a distribution grid a reduction in overall economic costs can be achieved by avoiding grid expansion measures.