The potential of electric vehicle workplace availability forecasts for participating in spot and frequency markets using vehicle-to-grid

Electric vehicles (EVs) smart charging is becoming increasingly important in supporting the electricity grid through frequency regulation services and supporting the shift to renewable energy. However, the EV availability and energy forecasting has emerged as a new field of research, yet it is not fully evaluated in combination with electricity markets. Therefore, this study aims to explore the economic potential of EV availability and energy forecasts when the EV participates in the spot and frequency markets. The method takes into consideration the settlement stage in both markets: frequency containment reserve (FCR) and spot market. The model is composed of the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) optimization for a workplace charging station using an individual EV smart charging model, which optimizes one vehicle. The inputs are historical electricity market and frequency data. The output is the total electricity cost calculated for a German case study. The results show that an accurate forecast for availability is crucial for EV smart charging. The availability forecast error contributes to higher penalties from FCR, larger penalties are experienced during summer months. A sensitivity analysis exploring the underestimation of energy content of the EV. This case shows the underestimation of a charging session energy need by 50%, equivalent to a completely failed availability forecast. Additionally, the energy content error forecast could result in a rise in the imbalance settlement cost, more prominent during winter months. For a future case study, the simulation could evaluate combining both the energy content and the availability error forecast with real-world EVs data and apply the optimization on multiple chargers.