Fleetpower: Creating Virtual Power Plants in Sustainable Smart Electricity Markets

Abstract

Electric vehicles have the potential to be used as virtual power plants to provide reliable back-up power. This generates additional profits for car sharing rental firms, who rent vehicles by the minute. We show this by developing a discrete event simulation platform based on real-time locational information (GPS) of 1,100 electric cars from Daimlers car sharing service Car2Go in San Diego, Amsterdam, and Stuttgart. We design trading prices (bids and asks) for participating in the respective operating reserve markets, markets for back-up power guaranteeing replacement when a power source fails, to sell the storage from idle electric vehicles. These trading prices are calibrated and tested with operating reserve market data. We investigate the influence of the charging infrastructure density, battery technology, and rental demand for vehicles on the payoff for the carsharing operator. We show that virtual power plants create sustainable revenue streams for electric vehicle car sharing companies without compromising their rental business.

Keywords: Fleet Power, Car Sharing, Virtual Power Plants, Sustainability, Smart Electricity Markets