Can electric vehicle charging be carbon neutral? Uniting smart charging and renewables

Growing numbers of plug-in electric vehicles in Europe will have an increasing impact on the electricity system. Using the agent-based simulation model PowerACE for ten electricity markets in Central Europe, we analyze how different charging strategies impact price levels and production- as well as consumption-based carbon emissions in France and Germany. The applied smart charging strategies consider spot market prices and/or real-time production from renewable energy sources. While total European carbon emissions do not change significantly in response to the charging strategy due to the comparatively small energy consumption of the electric vehicle fleet, our results show that all smart charging strategies reduce price levels on the spot market and lower total curtailment of renewables. Here, charging processes optimized according to hourly prices have the strongest effect. Furthermore, smart charging strategies reduce electricity purchasing costs for aggregators by about 10% compared to uncontrolled charging. In addition, the strategies allow aggregators to communicate near-zero allocated emissions for charging vehicles. An aggregator's charging strategy expanding classic electricity cost minimization by limiting total national PEV demand to 10% of available electricity production from renewable energy sources leads to the most favorable results in both metrics, purchasing costs and allocated emissions. Finally, aggregators and plug-in electric vehicle owners would benefit from the availability of national, real-time Guarantees of Origin and the respective scarcity signals for renewable production. • Agent-based simulation of ten European electricity markets in Central Europe. • Simulating millions of EV under four different smart charging strategies by 2030. • Impacts on prices, curtailment, production- and consumption-based emissions. • All charging strategies reduce spot market prices and total renewable curtailment. • Charging with renewables in real-time minimizes purchasing costs for aggregators.