To meet the ever-growing demand for charging points for electric vehicles, power grid owners need to know where to place them for best efficiency. In an SEC funded project, PhD student Alice Jansson, Lund University, together with her supervisors, develops a model for best planning where to put the charging points.
In the project the researchers are looking into planning of charging infrastructure from a grid perspective. Including 100 percent electromobility in the calculation, the goal is to provide knowledge on how to know where to put the charging points in an optimized way. SEC partners involved in the project are Lund University, KTH, Vattenfall, Eon, CEVT, Volvo Construction Equipment, and Scania.
“It is exiting and useful to have a collaborative project where both grid owners and vehicle manufacturers are participating”, says Alice Jansson.
Together with her supervisors Francisco Márquez Fernández and Olof Samuelsson she is looking at how to optimize the grid infrastructure in Skåne to see where charging points should be located, and whether the grid should be expanded or if the need for expansion can be reduced using flexibility services.
The results from the project will mainly be models that grid owners can use to predict where extra grid capacity will be needed and where the greatest risks for grid overload are situated. For this they use the Monte Carlo simulation, which is a tool that does probabilistic modelling, in this case of the development of electrification and need for charging versus capacity of the grid at different points.
“Today grid owners look at certain peak hours and parts of the grid to see what capacity they have. Our model gives a wider idea on a statistical basis of what capacity will be needed for the whole grid in a longer time period. Similar models have been used internationally, and I believe it can also be of great help for Swedish grid owners”, says Alice Jansson.
The complex situation regarding energy in Sweden and the world has made the fields of electric vehicles and electrical capacity in the grid grow closer much faster than expected. From being estimated as critical within about ten years’ time it has now grown to be on everyone’s lips due to fast growing societal electrification whilst in the middle of an energy crisis.
“When I started in this field with a Master’s thesis a few years ago supervisors said “soon this will be extremely relevant”. I thought “yeah right, they always say that”, but they were right. It is exciting to be in a project this relevant for society”, says Alice Jansson.