Seasonal Impacts on the Storage Capacity of EV Parking Lots

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) are the new bilateral assets of evolving smart electricity grids. Depending upon the technical benefits or economic expectations, they can be considered as non-stationary loads or they can serve as distributed storage units. Moreover, their behavior may change more than once a day. Therefore, their integration is both a challenge and an opportunity for smart power systems. From the point of electricity grids, parking lots (PLs) provide an occasion of supporting the grid by aggregating meaningful number of EVs. Car arrival departure pattern dominates the storage capacity of the PL. However, this pattern is sensitive to seasonal effects. The objective of this paper is to investigate this seasonal impacts of the environment on the storage capacity of the PL. Simulations are performed using car arrival/departure data of a representative PL in Istanbul. Time-dependent car park storage capacity of the PL is determined for a weekday for several periods of the year. The results are discussed from the point of distributed-storage availability of the grid.