Smart e-mobility: user potential in Germany today and in the future

Abstract:
Electric vehicles are an effective mean to decarbonize the transport sector in an effort to address the climate crisis. In this regard, intelligently managing the charging process of electric vehicles enables the purposeful integration of electric mobility. Use cases of such smart charging processes range from local self-optimization (PV-optimized charging, peak shaving) to spot market participation (day ahead or intraday market trading) to system-stabilizing measures (redispatch, balancing services). To contribute to current research, this paper presents a novel approach to determine so-called user potentials, which are the number of vehicles users, who are generally eligible to conduct a respective use case. Two types of user potentials are calculated for a base year (2021) and a future year (2030) for Germany using specific methodologies for ten use cases. The resulting user potentials for 2021 are relatively high in relation to the current number of electric vehicles registered in Germany. The use case day ahead market trading shows the highest user potential with at least 1.7 million applicable electric vehicles users. Optimized PV self-optimization and peak shaving also yield potentials of well above 1 million electric vehicles users. Other use cases, such as all intraday markets or balancing services, display rather small user potentials. For the future year of 2030, user potentials are increased for most cases. The largest increases are obtained for day ahead market trading and PV self-consumption (3.5 and 2.9 million additional users). Potentials of intraday market trading, peak shaving and redispatch remain rather moderate with only slight increases. For balancing services, the user potentials are even slightly decreased.