08.04.2022

Decentralized load management strategies and their impact on the future grid load in Munich

Charging electric vehicles can result in increased grid fees and grid connection fees for those connected to the grid. Various charging stations and wall box manufacturers offer their customers individual load management solutions to reduce these costs. The question arises as to whether such decentralized load management solutions can also contribute to reducing the network load in the distribution network and thus represent an alternative to the controversially discussed peak load capping per Section 14a of the Energy Industry Act. This question is addressed in the publication, which was presented from January 25 to 26, 2022, at the “Future Power Grids” conference as part of a poster contribution and will be briefly presented in this article.

In the study, the load management strategies “static” and “dynamic load management” were introduced and compared with an optimized charging strategy. All three methods were implemented in the distribution grid and energy system model “GridSim“. Based on previous investigations into current and future distribution network loads in Munich, the influence of decentralized load management strategies on the resulting network loads was investigated in a simulative manner. Figure 1 shows the peak power for the grid area “Pasing” (suburban grid area) for the various load management strategies and scenarios examined. The various components (PV, PtH systems, etc.) were distributed according to forecasts and detailed regionalization for the projection year 2030. The figure illustrates the share of the individual components in the peak power. In the simulations, the following two scenarios for vehicle distribution were taken into account and combined with the load management strategies already mentioned.

  • Reference scenario (Ref): Electric vehicle scenario regionalized to Munich (10 million electric vehicles in Germany) based on the current target of the federal government up to 2030 at the start of the project
  • Extreme scenario (Ext): Electric vehicle scenario regionalized to Munich (20 million electric vehicles in Germany)

 

Figure 1: Distribution of the annual power peak at grid level in Pasing

At the grid level, it can be seen that the load management strategies only slightly reduce the peak power compared to uncontrolled charging. Static load management achieves the most significant effect here. However, power peaks at the house connection level are significantly reduced. Dynamic load management proves to be the most effective in this context. The analyses show that the power peaks of the house connections usually occur at different times than the power peaks of the grid and that the grid load is reduced only marginally due to decentralized load management at the house connection level. From the point of view of the distribution grid, these load management strategies only make sense to a limited extent. A central load management system is expected to have more significant effects in reducing or limiting stress to the grid from electric vehicles.

 

The conference contribution was created as part of the “München elektrifiziert” (Me) project. As part of the Me project, the FfE investigates the current and future resulting network load through simulations with the electricity network and energy system model “GridSim”. This paper concludes the project’s three-part “contribution series” at the “Future Power Grids” conference. Over the past project years, insights were given into modeling and simulation of the status quo and future scenarios of electromobility and their impact on the load in the distribution network. In addition to this contribution, the FfE was represented with another article at the conference on future power grids.