Scenario Analysis of Regional Electricity Demand in the Residential and Commercial Sectors – influence of Diffusion of Photovoltaic Systems and Electric Vehicles into Power Grids

Recent years, various new energy products, such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and electric vehicles (EVs), have been diffused. While the diffusion of such products will affect the electricity demand of power grids, it is difficult to predict to what extent those products will be diffused in our society because the diffusion of such products depends on various unforeseeable factors such as energy policies. To analyze the influence of the diffusion of such products upon electricity demand, this paper describes several scenarios of future regional power grids. We focus on residential and commercial sectors because the end-use energy consumption in these sectors is, at least in Japan, increasing and it thus needs to be reduced. In the case study, we described scenarios in Toyonaka City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. The results revealed that the total electricity demand in the residential and commercial sectors decreases 10.5% from 2012 to 2030 with population decrease. The diffusion of PV decreases the total electrical load of the grid by 19.7%. Moreover, EV diffusion has the potential to reduce the peak of electrical load by 37.3% by using batteries of EVs.