Provision of regulating- and reserve power by electric vehicle owners in the Dutch market

- Simulation of four EVs participating in the secondary reserve during one year.
- Dutch travel patterns, unbalance prices and loads on urban power distribution.
- EVs show significant benefits by participating in the secondary reserve.
- Providing secondary reserve has little effect on the ability to travel.

Recent years have shown a large increase in electric vehicles (EVs), which could make a significant contribution meeting European, national and municipal energy- and climate goals. However, most EVs are not used for about 90% of the time, which makes their batteries available for other purposes. One of these purposes could be the provision of Regulating- and Reserve Power (RRP) to the transmission system operator, a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) concept. The aim of this paper is to determine the potential value that EVs could generate by providing RRP and identify EV user impacts on the provision of RRP. A model was developed to simulate the potential value of four commonly sold EVs under a baseline charging- and RRP dispatch scheme with three user categories for one year. The model used minutely settlement prices of the Dutch RRP market from 2014 to 2015, along with charging- and driving characteristics of Dutch EV drivers. Results show substantial effects of RRP provision in terms of monetary benefits, battery throughput and state-of-charge (SOC) distribution. Provision of RRP resulted in monetary benefits in the range between €120 and €750 annually per EV owner, depending on EV- and user category. This is accompanied by increased battery throughput and lower SOC distributions. However, the latter has little effect on the assumed trip requirements of the EV user. Subsequently, an assessment was made on the sensitivity of the results for changes in user characteristics and fleet sizes, which offered both favourable prospects and limitations. We conclude that the provision of RRP by EVs in the Netherlands shows promising potential.