Optimal coordination of variable renewable resources and electric vehicles as distributed storage for energy sustainability

This paper evaluates the coordination between electric vehicle (EV) fleets, as distributed storage devices, and variable renewable sources for mitigating energy imbalances and offering significant potentials for energy sustainability in an electricity infrastructure. The paper investigates the impact of such integrations for enhancing the environmental sustainability, social sustainability, and economic operation of electric power systems. The goal is to keep the energy sector on track for addressing the 2 degree Celsius (2DC) target per Copenhagen climate agreement.1  The paper identifies strategies for large-scale integration of variable generation resources without compromising the electricity infrastructure security. The power system uncertainties pertaining to hourly load and wind energy forecast errors, and random outages of generation and transmission components are taken into consideration in Monte Carlo scenarios. The stochastic optimization of day-ahead hourly scheduling of electricity is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming problem. The merits of the proposed optimization model are demonstrated by applying four numerical case studies. The conclusion is that the applications of renewable energy resources and the intelligent assimilation of EV fleets (both as a provider and a consumer of energy) offer major potentials for alleviating power system peak demands, minimizing power grid operation costs and hourly wind energy curtailments, and limiting the environmental impacts of fossil fuel-based thermal generating units in the stochastic operation of an electricity infrastructure.