Prospects of optimized distributed generation and electric vehicle charging in micro grids

The design of a likewise sustainable, climate-friendly, safe, and efficient energy supply presents both current and future society with great challenges. In order to meet this requirement, the energy sector, driven by political, economical, and social decisions, is changing continuously. This evolution thereby affects all areas of energy supply, namely provision, transport, distribution and demand. Induced by expansion of decentralized electricity generation by renewable energy sources (RES), use of storage, new load characteristics such as electric vehicles (EVs) (Flath et al. 2013), and market liberalization (Markard and Truffer 2006), as well as increased involvement of society on climate protection and market participation (Clastres 2011), the growing number and heterogeneity of actors and elements particularly increase the complexity of the electricity sector. Apart from the implied problems, these developments offer great potential within a new design of a future power supply: More and more consumers will generate electricity by using combined heat and power (CHP) and photovoltaic (PV) systems, and will even apply either a stationary or mobile storage (EV) (IEA 2012; Flath et al. ... mehr2013), therefore becoming in most hours less dependent on centralized conventional power generation. More frequently those electricity producing consumers will be situated in electricity networks which changed from a topdown to a cell structure (Clastres 2011). Moreover they will be organized in local markets (Hvelplund 2006) with simple access for individual actors using new information and communication technology (ICT) appliances. These local grid cell systems offer an incentive to locally balance power supply and consumption, and hence reduce the degree of grid capacity utilization. To estimate the potential of such a new design of a future power supply system, its elements and their impact on the system must be analyzed in detail. This paper therefore aims to examine individual consumers and their cost optimized scheduling of power consumption (incl. charging of the EV), generation, and storage, as well as the implications for the local grid cell.