Costs and carbon emissions of shared autonomous electric vehicles in a Virtual Power Plant and Microgrid with renewable energy

Abstract

Shared autonomous electric vehicles (SAEVs) are expected to become commercially available within the next decade. This technology could transform transport paradigms and alter the availability of controllable storage from electrified transportation. This work describes a novel simulation methodology for investigating the potential for SAEVs to act as storage in the framework of a Virtual Power Plant or a microgrid with intermittent renewable energy. The model simulates aggregate storage availability from vehicles based on transport patterns and optimizes charging. We study the case of a grid-connected VPP with rooftop solar and the case of a isolated microgrid with solar, wind, and dispatchable generation. The results show that SAEVs offer significantly lower costs compared to private vehicles. SAEVs can also substantially increase renewable energy utilization in a microgrid.