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Electric vehicle charging in the Dutch low-voltage grid

Nijenhuis, Bart (2020) Electric vehicle charging in the Dutch low-voltage grid.

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Abstract:The current transition from generating energy with fossil fuels towards a more clean and sustainable energy generation influences our society on many levels. Replacing fossil fuel cars by electric vehicles (EV) is an important step in this transition. EVs are a suitable alternative to fossil fuel cars, as they do not exhaust carbon-dioxide directly from the exhaust and are overall less environmentally damaging. However, banning out fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel does not mean our demand to travel decreases. All these EVs need to charge, preferably from a sustainable electricity source. However, our current electricity grid might not be suitable to handle a large uptake in electric vehicles. EVs use relatively high-powered chargers and the energy demands are large, which can induce a severe load on the grid. This thesis researches to what extent the Dutch low-voltage electricity grid can handle an increase in electric vehicles. The Dutch low-voltage (LV) grid consists out of an estimated 300,000 feeder cables. The outcome of a clustering method for a part of the Dutch LV grid is used to approximate a set of 26 feeders with different features, such as length, number of connections and cable type that can represent the Dutch LV grid. These feeders are implemented in an LV grid model in DEMKit, a tool for simulating smart grids, developed at the University of Twente. The Artificial Load Profile Generator, which works together with DEMKit, allows us to create realistic household load models. These household load models are combined with the grid models of the feeders and this allows us to simulate different types of situations. We propose a model to estimate the probability that an EV is charging in a certain timeslot on a certain day, using plug-in time distributions of real EV charging sessions. Five different charging regimes are introduced and combined into a single model with two EV charging power levels. Based on this, the model calculates the probability that a certain number of EVs in a neighborhood charges simultaneously. Combining this with the limits of each feeder, we can estimate the expected number of blackouts for all possible EV penetration rates for all individual feeders. This is translated to a situation for the whole of the Netherlands. Currently, the LV grid in the Netherlands experiences 52 daily power interruptions, or blackouts, on average per day. The results show that at an EV penetration rate of 30%, the expected number of daily blackouts in the Netherlands increases by 20%. However, after surpassing this value and further increasing the EV penetration rate, the expected number of blackouts rapidly increases.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Subject:50 technical science in general
Programme:Sustainable Energy Technology MSc (60443)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/83800
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