Assessing the potential of electric vehicles and photovoltaics in a smart-grid environment in Brazil

Ricardo Rther1, Luiz Carlos Pereira Junior, Paulo Henrique Pfitscher & Trajano Viana Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/UFSC Caixa Postal 476, Florianpolis-SC, 88040-900, Brazil Tel.: +55 48 3721 5174 FAX: +55 48 3721 7615 Email: ruther@mbox1.ufsc.br
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Visiting Academic at The School of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering The University of Western Australia, Nedlands WA, 6009 Australia

Abstract Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy conversion can assist urban distribution grids in shaving energy demand peaks when and where there is a good match between the solar irradiation resource availability and electricity demands. This is particularly relevant in urban areas, where air-conditioning is the predominant load, and on-site generation a most welcome resource. PV plus short-term storage can offer additional grid support in the early evening, when solar irradiation is no longer available, but residential loads peak. This is particularly relevant in Brazil, where electric showerheads represent a considerable burden to the distribution utilities from 19:00 to 22:00. Electric vehicles (EV) might become a widespread technology in the near term, and they represent new electrical energy demands for generation, transmission and distribution (GT&D) utilities. Plug-in EVs that are parked at home in the early evening (e.g. from 19:00) can play the role of short-term energy storage devices for PV electricity generated earlier in the day. In a smart-grid environment, the combination of EVs and PVs can offer a good solution to assist the public grid: (i) EVs can offer grid support to urban feeders in the early evening through smart vehicle-to-grid (V2G) discharging strategies; (ii) building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) can generate all the electricity needed to supply the new energy demands represented by EVs and also offer grid support to urban feeders at daytime; (iii) and utilities can offer idle GT&D resources to recharge EVs through smart grid-to-vehicle (G2V) recharging strategies in the early hours (00:00 to 06:00). In this work we present results on our analyses of these strategies applied to selected urban feeders in the metropolitan area of Florianpolis Brazil. We show that, in a smart-grid environment, it should be possible to accommodate EVs, BIPVs, V2G and G2V, and at the same time assist the urban grids and supply the new energy demands represented by the introduction of an EV fleet, without compromising the existing grid infrastructure. 1. Introduction Among all human activities, transportation and energy generation are the two single largest contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide, and despite

technological innovation leading to lower emissions per km or per kWh, total global emissions due to these activities keeps increasing every year. Among all renewable energy technologies, direct solar energy conversion or photovoltaics (PV) is the fastest growing segment in the energy generation industry. In the last decade the PV industry annual production moved from megawatts to gigawatts, reaching the multigigawatt scale in the second half of the decade. The photovoltaic industrys compound annual growth rate from 2000 through the end of 2010 was >50%, while the CAGR from 2005 through 2010 was >60% (Mints 2011). In 2013 grid parity when the cost of solar electricity becomes competitive with conventional, retail (including taxes and charges) grid-supplied electricity - is expected to be achieved in many places worldwide. Grid-connected PV is usually perceived as an energy technology for developed countries, whereas isolated, stand-alone PV is considered as more suited for applications in developing nations, where so many individuals still lack access to electricity. This rationale is based on the still high costs of PV when compared with conventional electricity (Rther and Zilles 2011). The direct conversion of sunlight into electricity with grid-connected PV generators leads to a number of benefits to both the environment and the electricity system. The main technical advantage is the possibility of producing clean and renewable electrical power close to consumers or even at point of use, integrating PV generators on buildings or around urban areas. The peak shaving capability of distributed PV power systems reduces the strain on grid infrastructure (Perez et al. 1996, Perez et al. 2001, Jardim et al. 2008). A large number of distributed units for the same installed capacity allows for deferral of a bigger network investment. This favours small- to medium-sized urban PV systems (Mendz et al. 2006). The traditional utility concept relies on a relatively small number of fairly large and centralised power plants, which quite often are distant from the urban centres where energy is consumed. In a large country like Brazil (8.5 million km2), transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure and associated losses are considerable, adding value to distributed PV power that goes beyond the value of the kilowatt-hour. Hydropower generation plays a fundamental role in Brazil, in spite of the large distances from urban areas. The present installed capacity of some 75 GW corresponds to over 77% of the national electricity supply. Growing environmental restrictions, and the larger distances from urban centres to the remaining potential, however, will lead to an increase in end-user prices of electricity from new hydropower plants. The Brazilian interconnected electricity system is one of the largest and most complex in the world, with an installed capacity of over 108 GW (Rther and Zilles 2011). PV can contribute to a distribution utilitys capacity if the demand peak occurs in the daytime period. Besides the advantage of peak demand reduction, PV systems should also contribute to a longer life of utility feeders (Jimenez et. al. 2006). Commercial regions with high midday air-conditioning loads have normally a demand curve in a good synchronism with the solar irradiance (Perez et al. 2001; Jardim et al. 2008; Rther et al. 2008). Another important factor in this analysis, is the comparison between the peak load values in summer and winter. The greater

the demand in summertime in comparison with the demand in wintertime, the more closely the load is likely to match the actual solar resource. This is the typical picture of most capital cities in Brazil and many other sunny, developing countries, and the match between solar generation availability and power demands in urban areas is growing with the growing use of air-conditioning, made possible by the improving economic conditions in the last 10 years. Utility feeders in urban areas all over the country show distinct regions where commercial and office buildings dominate, and which present daytime peak demand curves, and residential regions where the peak demand values take place in the evening. To add value to the distributed nature of solar generated electricity, it is important to know the PV capacity of the different regions of a city when installing a PV power plant, in order to select the utility feeder with the greatest capacity credit. In this context, the concept of the Effective Load Carrying Capacity (ELCC) of PV was defined, to quantify the capacity credit of a strategically sited PV installation (Perez et al. 1996, Perez et al. 2001, Rther et al. 2008). Electric vehicles (EVs) have been experiencing considerable development in recent years, and pure plug-in battery vehicles are now commercially available from a number of car manufacturers worldwide. EVs have been proposed as a new power source for electric utilities in the US and Japan in the late nineties (Kempton and Letendre 1997, Kempton and Kubo 2000). Vehicle-to-grid power (V2G) uses electricdrive vehicles to provide power for specific electricity markets, since the electric power grid and light vehicle fleets are exceptionally complementary as systems for managing energy and power (Kempton and Tomic 2005). A control signal from the grid operator can send a request for power to a large number of parked and pluggedin EVs to feed energy to the grid. As information technology and battery technology evolves, the opportunities for EVs to assist the public electricity grid in the V2G concept in a smart-grid environment become ever more real. Electric drive vehicles for V2G can be either hybrid, fuel cell, or pure battery vehicles. They are all EVs in the sense that they all use an electric motor to provide all or part of the mechanical drive power. For V2G, each individual vehicle must have three required elements: (i) a connection to the grid for electrical energy flow, (ii) control or logical connection to allow for communication with the grid operator, and (iii) controls for metering on-board the vehicle. Pure plug-in battery EVs already have a grid connection to allow for charging, and the incremental costs and operational adjustments to add V2G are negligible (Kempton and Tomic 2005). Furthermore, battery EVs have larger batteries (e.g. 24 kWh battery capacity for the Nissan Leaf) than hybrid EVs (e.g. 1.6 kWh for the Toyota Camry) or plug-in hybrids (e.g. 6 kWh for the DaimlerChrysler Sprinter). The widespread use of plug-in electric vehicles in urban environments will lead to considerably large new electrical energy demands, which will have to be met by new, and ideally distributed, power generation plants. Especially in large and sunny countries like Brazil, solar PV conversion can meet these new electricity requirements, offering at the same time clean and renewable energy to alleviate the environmental impact of the transportation sector, and making the most of the

distributed nature of the solar radiation resource in a distributed generation (DG) and smart-grid scenario. In this work we assess the potential of EVs in assisting the urban public electricity grids with appropriate V2G and G2V scheduling, and the potential of grid-connected and building-integrated PV to generate all the electricity needs represented by a fleet of pure battery plug-in EVs. 2. Assessing the potential of PVs and EVs in a smart-grid scenario in Brazil In most of the Brazilian urban centres, due to the extensive use of electric resistance showerheads for water heating, energy demand peaks in the early evening, from 19:00 to 21:00 (Naspolini et al. 2010, Naspolini & Rther 2011). Distribution utilities impose prohibitively high tariffs to business and industry in this period to avoid even higher power demands. These demand peaks coincide with the typical urban driver weekday habits of returning home from a working day. Figure 1 shows the typical load curve of a specific urban feeder in Florianpolis-SC.

Figure 1: Typical load curve of urban feeder TDE05 in Florianoplis-SC, Brazil. With vehicle-to-grid (V2G) strategies in a smart-grid environment, a fleet of plug-in EVs can assist the grid in reducing the evening peak (green area).

In a smart-grid, grid-connected PV, and plug-in EV world scenario, we have assessed the potential contribution of EVs to assist in shaving the load peaks of a distribution utility feeder at peak hours. The detailed methodology used in this work can be found elsewhere (Pereira Junior 2011). We have also assessed the potential of PV to complement the additional energy requirements represented by the incorporation of a number of EVs to the urban fleet in a specific utility feeder in the metropolitan area of Florianpolis. The feeder analysed supplies energy to a mixed residential/commercial/university area. Figure 2 shows a schematic diagram of this concept. We have assumed a typical 40 km/day journey for a compact,160 kmrange, 24 kWh laminated-type Li-ion battery capacity, Nissan Leaf plug-in EV, and the average 1550 kWh/m2 annual solar irradiation resource availability for the city of Florianpolis (27oS, 48oW). We have studied the typical daily urban commute in the metropolitan area of Florianpolis, where the driver leaves home for work in the early morning, driving some 20 km on average, and leaving the car parked all day long,

possibly under a PV-covered car parking lot. The surface area requirement for a PV generator to provide electricity for this EV is some 20m2, and is equivalent to the size of the corresponding car parking spot.

Figure 2: Schematic diagram of the interaction of solar PV generators and Electric Vehicles with the public electricity grid in a smart-grid environment.

We have also studied the distribution utilitys feeder characteristics and load profile, and the effects of using both building-integrated PV and the EVs batteries to flatten the feeders load curve. Figure 3 shows a real, typical load curve of the feeder under study on 1st March 2008 (red circles), the peak-shaving effect of a number of EVs assisting the feeder at peak hours in the evening (blue triangles), the contribution of PV at day-time (green diamonds), and the recharging of the EV fleet during the early hours (brown circles), when centralised generators operate at partial load conditions. Figure 4 shows, as an example for the month of March 2008 and on a daily basis, the total maximum number of EVs that can participate in (left) assisting the corresponding feeder with peak-shaving in the evening (V2G), and (right) be recharged in the early hours (G2V) without imposing the need of any upgrade in the existing urban distribution system.

Figure 3: Original demand profile for feeder TDE05 in Florianpolis Brazil (red circles), and the potential contribution of PV (green diamonds), EVs for evening peak-shaving (blue triangles), and the corresponding load for EV recharging on the early hours (brown circles).

Figure 4: Maximum number of EVs that feeder TDE05 can take on a given day in March 2008, for evening peak-shaving V2G discharging (left), and early hours G2V recharging (right).

We have studied the urban area availability for accommodating the PV generators required to produce enough electricity to supply the new EV fleet. We propose using the existing buildings rooftops of both the residences where the EVs will be pluggedin during the evening and early hours, as well as on large-area buildings at our University, which is served by the same feeder. We have also carried out this study for both thin-film amorphous silicon (a-Si) and traditional crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV modules. On our University campus alone, the potential for integrating PV on existing, large-area rooftops is larger than 3 MWp for a-Si, and larger than 6.7 MWp for c-Si. Using a conservative annual energy yield of 1200 to 1300 MWh/MWp for Florianpolis, the annual PV electricity production potential of these areas is over 3600 MWh for a-Si and 8040 MWh for c-Si. This is enough to supply electricity to an EV fleet of some 2000 cars using a-Si, and over 4000 cars using c-Si PV modules. The next step in our assessment is to investigate (i) the effects of making hundreds (400 to 600) of EVs available to assist a particular utility feeder in the urban distribution grid from 19:00 to 24:00; (ii) the effects of introducing a certain amount (e.g. 1 MWp) of grid-connected, building-integrated PV to generate enough energy to cover the new energy demands represented by the new EV fleet, and at the same time assist the utility feeder during daytime hours; and (iii) the capacity of, and the effects on, the utility feeder in recharging the EV fleet during the early hours (00:00 to 06:00). We assume a typical 4 kW EV battery charger to recharge the Nissan Lead 24kWh EV battery in up to 6 hours. Figure 5 shows the hourly demand profile of the selected utility feeder for all the 8784 hours of year 2008. While the utility considers the shorter interval between 19:00 and 21:00 as its peak demand hours1, demand often peaks on the longer period from before 18:00 to after 22:00 as shown in Figure 5. It also shows that during the early hours from 00:00 to 06:00 the feeder is underutilised and able to supply energy to recharge a considerable amount of EVs. Furthermore, Figure 5 also shows that during daytime hours the feeder is able to receive large amounts of PV-generated electricity from grid-connected, buildingintegrated PV generators.
The national energy regulatory body in Brazil (ANEEL Agncia Nacional de Energia Eltrica) allows all utilities to select three hours from 18:00 to 24:00 to allocate their official peak demand times, where electricity retail prices for commercial and industrial consumers are considerably higher than during off-peak periods.
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 Figure 5: Original energy demand profile of the urban feeder TDE05 (in MW) in Florianpolis for the 8784 hours of year 2008.

Figure 6 shows the simulated hourly demand profile of the same urban feeder resulting from the EVs and PV contributions, as well as the EVs recharging demands. It is clear that the EV contribution in the early evening can be extended to 18:00 to make an optimised use of the EVs potential. The incorporation of PV to generate the new energy demands represented by the new EV fleet is comfortably accommodated during the daytime hours. Figure 6 also shows that the early hours recharging of the EVs has to be closely monitored to avoid overloading the grid (see red area in the early hours of March 2008).

Figure 6: Simulated demand profile of the urban feeder TDE05 (in MW) in Florianpolis resulting from V2G contribution from 19:00 to 24:00, PV generation at daytime hours, and G2V EV recharging from 00:00 to 06:00, for the 8784 hours of year 2008.

3. Conclusions We have studied the effects of incorporating controlled amounts of both EVs and PVs in the urban environment in the city of Florianpolis Brazil. We have shown that EVs can offer valuable grid support to the feeder analysed at the critical peak demand hours from 19:00 to 22:00, and that PV can generate the new energy demands represented by the introduction of the EV fleet. The recharging of the EV

fleet during the early hours makes a better use of the idling TD&E resources. The introduction of both EVs and PVs at the levels studied appears to be possible without any major upgrading of the existing grid.
Acknowledgments

We acknowledge Centrais Eltricas de Santa Catarina (CELESC) for supplying us with the hourly demand data used in this work, and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfico e Tecnolgico (CNPq) for financial support. R.Rther acknowledges the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for sponsoring the PV system from which the solar PV performance data used in this work was obtained. References Jardim, C.S., Rther, R., Salamoni, I.T., Viana, T.S., Rebechi, S.H., Knob, P.J., The strategic siting and the roofing area requirements of building-integrated photovoltaic solar energy generators in urban areas in Brazil. Energy and Buildings 40 (2008) 365-370. Jimenez, H., Calleja, H., Gonzlez, R., Huacuz, J., Lagunas, J., The impact of photovoltaic systems on distribution transformer: A case study. Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 311-321. Kempton, W. & Letendre, S., Electric vehicles as a new power source for electric utilities. Trans. Res. D 2 (1997) 157175. Kempton, W. & Kubo, T., Electric-drive vehicles for peak power in Japan. Energy Policy 28 (2000) 918. Kempton, W. & Tomic, J., Vehicle-to-grid power fundamentals: Calculating capacity and net revenue. Journal of Power Sources 144 (2005) 268-279. Kempton, W. & Tomic, J., Vehicle-to-grid power implementation: From stabilizing the grid to supporting large-scale renewable energy. Journal of Power Sources 144 (2005) 280-294. Mndez, V. H., Rivier, J., de la Fuente, J. I., Gmez, T., Arceluz, J., Marn J., Madurga A., Impact of distributed generation on distribution investment deferral, Electrical Power and Energy Systems 28 (2006) 244-252. Mints, P., Private Communication, 2011. Naspolini, H. F., Milito, H.S.G. & Ruther, R., The role and benefits of solar water heating in the energy demands of low-income dwellings in Brazil. Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 28352845. Naspolini H. F. & Rther, R., The impacts of solar water heating in low-income households on the distribution utilitys active, reactive and apparent power demands, Solar Energy 85 (2011) 20232032. Pereira Junior, L. C., A interao entre geradores solares fotovoltaicos e veculos eltricos conectados na rede eltrica pblica. M.Sc. Thesis. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2011) 138 p (available at www.fotovoltaica.ufsc.br). Perez, R., Seals, R., Herig, C., PV can add capacity for the grid. NREL Publications, Golden, USA (1996), DOC/GO-10096-262. Perez, R., Letendre, S., Herig, C., PV and grid reliability: availability of PV power during capacity shortfalls. In: Proceedings of the American Solar Energy SocietyASES Annual Conference, Washington, DC, (2001) pp. 14. Rther, R., Knob, P.J., Jardim, C.S., Rebechi, S.H., Potential of building-integrated photovoltaic solar energy generators in assisting daytime feeders in urban areas in Brazil. Energy Conversion and Management 49 (2008) 1074-1079. Rther, R. & Zilles, R., Making the case for grid-connected photovoltaics in Brazil. Energy Policy 39 (2011) 1027-1030.