The deployment of electric transportation vehicles plays a key role in the energy transition. In addition to new challenges related to charging needs, the introduction of electric vehicles represents a new opportunity, thanks to new integration technologies, generally referred to as VGI (Vehicle-Grid Integration). Indeed, the charging power modulation and possibly even the discharge power of the vehicles themselves allow for the provision of services to the electric grid, both local and system-wide. The research activity presented in this report analyzes and tries to solve some of the aspects that can facilitate and accelerate the creation of new charging infrastructure and its participation in markets, thus creating new market opportunities and facilitating the adoption of electric vehicles.
The electric vehicle charging management system has been further improved, which allows for optimizing the allocation of charging and bids in the markets, taking into account all the sources of uncertainty inherent in the issue and the possible participation in various market phases – including intra-day phases – while ensuring a high level of reliability.
The system developed also allows for the use of bidirectional charging (V2G – Vehicle to Grid mode), which enables wider participation in the markets, making greater use of vehicle batteries. To test whether this increased use leads to premature aging thereof, typical one-way and two-way charging profiles were applied in the laboratory to vehicular modules: in the tests conducted so far (amounting to about 60,000 km), no relevant difference between the two types of use has been shown.
One of the most promising use cases to foster the spread of electric mobility and VGI is that of the development of corporate charging infrastructure. Therefore, an IT platform was designed to manage the charging points in RSE’s corporate parking lot, defining its functional requirements and conducting the first integration tests of the ARVE (Electric Vehicle Charging Aggregator) system.