3 minute read
CHARGING STATION ALERT: TIME FOR SMARTER CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE
There’s no way around it: shiny new electric vehicles seem to be popping up everywhere. Even more so, from 2029 onwards, the only new vehicles up for sale in Belgium will be completely electric. To accommodate this shift, a large network of charging stations is necessary. Determining the location of these charging stations turns out to be a multifaceted problem. Bryan Coulier -- PhD student with the research group Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics (NUMA) at KU Leuven, Ghent campus -- distinguishes his research by considering both the electrical constraints of the underlying low-voltage grid as well as geographical factors.
Alarge portion of the vehicles will be electric in the foreseeable future,” Bryan states. “However, impulsively placing the necessary charging infrastructure for this fleet of electric vehicles at manually chosen locations is not the best strategy. Several aspects need to be considered simultaneously. Firstly, we have to take into account the geography of the city: this entails that all electric vehicle owners should have access to a public charging station within a 250-meter radius from their home. At the same time we have to consider the existing electrical grid in order to avoid unnecessary investments in expansions of the grid by for example building additional medium-voltage cabins. This is the focus of my research. I am also analysing which sections within the electric grid require reinforcement in order to maintain optimal performance and meet energy demand effectively.”
Bottlenecks
“When positioning charging infrastructure, we have to consider the existing underlying low-voltage grid. This grid has a tree structure which branches out into several subnetworks. If the capacity of a cable near the medium-voltage cabin is too low, this can cause power shortages further down the grid. This bottleneck needs to be addressed first before reinforcing any other connections downstream,” Coulier continues.
“We also have to avoid large voltage drops throughout the grid,” he clarifies. “You can compare this to situations during hot summer months, when Fluvius temporarily shuts down some solar panels in order to avoid simultaneous injection of large amounts of energy into the electrical grid and possibly causing overvoltage.”
Looking over the fence
“The Netherlands is facing these issues already: grid operators often have to turn off public charging stations during peak hours to avoid grid congestion. This is the result of a naive rollout of charging infrastructure combined with an unsustainable plan,” Coulier notes.
“In Flanders, charging stations are being installed impulsively based on each new request from electrical vehicle owners, but this strategy is not sustainable if all road transport is to become greener, unless significant investments are made in the electrical grid,” he warns.
Opting for the future
“We developed an optimization algorithm to handle these problems. Our decision support software can help governments to deploy charging infrastructure in a structural and future-proof way. ”
Moreover, using this software leads to significantly lower investment costs compared to the current approach. A very conservative estimate shows that we save at least 60% on the investment costs necessary to manage a fully electrified automotive sector. These additional costs can be avoided by applying a forward-thinking and structured deployment of charging infrastructure from the start. Without such an approach, we will inevitably face the same problems as the Netherlands,” Bryan concludes.
Hanne De Coene and Tine Desodt
https://numa.cs.kuleuven
