Impacts of electric vehicles on the European high and extra high voltage power grid

Abstract

The impact of electric vehicles on the electricity grid has been focused on by the literature in many facets, comprising considerations of the electricity system of a single household up to the highest voltage grid level. But each of these analyses is focusing on a single grid level. While the impact on the local level depends strongly on the specific environment and is consequently diverse, there is strong evidence that the impact on the highest grid level is non-critical. So far, there is no study considering several voltage levels together. Consequently, we analyzed here for the first time all voltage levels between 60 and 380 kV together for the European transmission grid and included, besides the load flexibilities from home charging, also the load from fast charging stations for the year 2050 with a completely replaced car fleet by electric vehicles. While the impact on the security of supply is rather marginal, with a slight increase of load shedding on some distribution grid nodes, the impact on nodal prices and greenhouse gas emission is—with up to 9%—more severe. When applying the model on the highest grid level alone, our results show significantly smaller impacts. These results endorse our comprehensive approach, which considers several grid levels and their comprehensive interactions—an isolated consideration of grid levels seems inappropriate for our research questions.