Research Article

Urban energy system impact analysis: integration of household solar panels and electric vehicles into smart cities via storage and smart charging

¹ Environmental Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA
² Rocky Mountain Institute, Boulder, USA

^* e-mail: steffi.mitova@colorado.edu

Received: 3 July 2022
Received in final form: 29 August 2022
Accepted: 30 August 2022

Abstract

Smart charging and battery storage can improve the integration of electric vehicles (EV's) and photovoltaic solar panels (PV's) into the residential buildings of a smart city. The impact of those two solutions can vary across households with an EV, PV, both, or no technologies. Therefore, it is unclear how smart charging and storage impact the energy, economic, and environmental benefits of each technology adoption group. To address this problem, an urban energy system dynamics model compares two smart charging scenarios that optimize PV energy consumption and carbon emissions as well as one scenario that optimizes storage. The results show that in general storage reduces carbon emissions and increases solar energy use more effectively than smart charging. Specifically, it reduces emissions at a rate of 17% and smart charging at 7%; it also increases PV self-consumption at a rate of 45% and smart charging at 28%. The main reason for this difference is that storage is able to shift a larger electricity load than smart charging without compromising user convenience. However, expenditures decline at a faster rate in the smart charging scenario (–91%) than the storage scenario (–52%), due to the ratio of Value of Solar to residential tariffs. Therefore, this article recommends storage as a solution to all technology adoption groups; furthermore, cities are encouraged to invest in energy storage solutions in the short term as well as smart devices in the long term, so that eventually smart charging could shift a larger share of the loads as well. The contribution of this study is that it compares several experimental groups across the energy, emission, and economic benefits derived from their respective clean energy technologies; it also provides specific guidelines for parties interested in optimizing the benefits of their technologies.