On Utilization of  Commercial Electric Vehicles for Grid Services

Karimi, Hossein

On Utilization of Commercial Electric Vehicles for Grid Services

dc.contributor.advisor	Zareipour, Hamidreza
dc.contributor.advisor	Rosehart, William Daniel
dc.contributor.author	Karimi, Hossein
dc.contributor.committeemember	Drew, Steve H
dc.contributor.committeemember	Nielsen, Jorgen S
dc.contributor.committeemember	Demissie, Merkebe Getachew
dc.contributor.committeemember	Kamwa, Innocent
dc.date	2024-11
dc.date.accessioned	2024-09-16T16:50:21Z
dc.date.available	2024-09-16T16:50:21Z
dc.date.issued	2024-09-11
dc.description.abstract	The penetration of passenger electric vehicles into the grid has seen remarkable growth over the past years. This transition is now extending into the commercial sector, where fleets are shifting from conventional to electric vehicles. The aggregated batteries of these electric fleets can provide a large amount of energy and power. When strategically deployed, these batteries can help fleet owners reduce electricity costs by providing energy during peak hours, facilitating load shifting, or generating revenue by renting battery capacity to third parties or the grid. Therefore, this thesis explores the potential of Electric Commercial Fleets (ECFs) for energy services and examines the benefits they can offer to both fleet owners and the grid. In the first contribution of this thesis, a mutlistage investment planning is developed for the transition from conventional fleet to ECF. This work first analyzes the revenue opportunities within the electricity markets in North America. Next, it assesses how these auxiliary services can influence the dynamics of fleet transitions, reduce the total cost of ownership for fleet owners, and accelerate the transition to electric fleets. Two additional contributions focus on the daily operational aspects of these fleets. In the first contribution of operation planning, a new time-index Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is developed that helps commercial and industrial entity to concurrently optimize their logistics and energy provision for their self-use. The advantage of this method is shown compared to the conventional VRP. For larger benchmarks, Column Generation and Branch-and-Price techniques is employed to decompose the large instances into smaller, more manageable problems for efficient solving. In the last contribution, the electric fleet is utilized as mobile battery storage to address planned outages across the city of Calgary. A robust optimization counterpart is further developed to deal with the uncertainties of logistics and electricity demand. The results illustrate that ECFs have the potential to outperform a single mobile battery system both financially and technically. This advantage stems from employing the sharing economy concept and the presence of a larger number of vehicles distributed across the city.
dc.identifier.citation	Karimi, H. (2024). On utilization of commercial electric vehicles for grid services (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/119732
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Demand Charge Management
dc.subject	Power System
dc.subject	Grid Services
dc.subject	Electric Commercial Fleet
dc.subject	Investment planning
dc.subject	Mobile Battery Storage
dc.subject.classification	Engineering--Electronics and Electrical
dc.title	On Utilization of Commercial Electric Vehicles for Grid Services
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Engineering – Electrical & Computer
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.