Overview
In order to promote the share of electric vehicles on the roads, advances with respect to the aspect of corresponding infrastructures constitute an important and necessary step towards reaching this goal. Especially the interaction between battery and charging station in order to increase the customer acceptance of electric vehicles needs to be analysed with the help of an appropriate business model need to be developed.
The research project MEREGIOmobil aims at integrating mobile battery storage systems in vehicles into the existing energy system in an efficient way by using innovative information and communication technologies and implementing them in coherent overall concepts. Different utilization scenarios with regard to mobility behaviour are analysed under the heading "Integrating mobile storage systems using private and public charging points".
The Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) is exploring possible business models for electromobility paying attention to the effect of different control options. The main areas of focus in this field are the evaluation of business models with regard to different vehicle types and users, the analysis of control options based on information and communication technology (ICT), customer acceptance and extending existing models in order to address this issue.
Prior to the field test and accompanying it later on, a research and demonstration laboratory has been built up and is operated by the KIT. The focus of this lab is to implement an adaptive cooperation of intelligent appliances for reasons of efficient load control while integrating both decentralized power plants and electric vehicles which are able to feed back energy stored in their batteries into the grid. Supplementary simulation scenarios will provide an opportunity to investigate scaling effects.
Laboratory experiment
Electric vehicles will be integrated into a research and demonstration laboratory in order to facilitate the practical application of the developed concepts in a realistic setting.
The laboratory is a prefabricated house with a floor area of about 60 m2 and represents a prototype for a smart home with its characteristic elements, such as decentralized power plants, consumer loads, and energy storage systems.
Among other energy sources, photovoltaic panels as well as a micro combined heat and power plant will be put in place. Typical electric appliances, such as a washing machine, a dish washer, or a refrigerator, are supposed to serve as consumer loads. The electric appliances employed in the project represent both conventional commercially available devices as well as intelligent and therefore controllable ones. A battery-charging station will also be integrated into this laboratory, so that electric vehicles can be incorporated into the smart home both in forms of consumer loads and electrical storage systems.
As a buffer, the battery can store surplus renewable energy during off-peak hours and feed the stored electrical energy back into the grid when needed in order to respond to peak loads.
Field test
The technical and economic concepts validated during the laboratory test and proved to be feasible in the project will be tested within the scope of a large-scale field test planned in the area of Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Kehl.
The study of cross-border roaming will be carried out in cooperation with "Electricité de Strasbourg". The objective of the field test is to construct and test the technical infrastructure as well as novel value-added services that will support energy and storage management.
Simulations
As a part of the MeRegioMobil project, simulation components will be developed and employed, so that a large variety of concepts elaborated during the project runtime can be closely examined and analysed, including the identification of their potentials.
Based on these results, different concepts can be singled out and tested during the laboratory or field test, with the results being thus verified. In addition to this, alternative approaches can be analysed in a simple and quick manner.
The simulation scenarios comprise analyses of consumption behaviour, business models, underlying information and communication technology (ICT system), long-term consequences as well as effects arising from the large-scale implementation of the developed concepts. The simulations will be carried out in coordination with real experiments, parameters of the simulation components being constantly adjusted and improved in accordance with the data gained from the laboratory and field test.
Evaluations
The concepts and technologies developed in the laboratory and tested during the field experiment will be subject to a constant evaluation that will be dealing with analysis and assessment of business models and incentive systems, impact on the power grid, energy system issues as well as legal aspects. The results of the evaluation will be continually incorporated into the parameters of the simulation and laboratory experiment as well as into the implementation of the field test, so that best possible findings can be derived.
Business models: The methodology can be summarized as follows:
- Development of business models: Total Cost of Ownership
- Control options: Agent-based simulation model PowerACE and Java simulation
- Customer acceptance: Socio-economic study and Interview with test consumers
The overall project structure of MeRegioMobil is depicted in the figure in the documents section.
Funding
Results
Public information can only be retrieved for the sub-project on evaluation and new business models.
There are a variety of existing business models for electromobility. A variety of existing business models for electromobility can help to promote the market success of electric vehicles, but at the same time it also becomes clear how complex the concepts are. For example, business models have to involve completely new actors who were not integrated into the previous value chain based on combustion engines. Because of the complexity, the business models are often allocated control and information technology so that the product or service is emphasized and there is no additional effort for the final customer. Therefore, new, innovative approaches contain simple processes based on information technology such as, e.g. locating and reserving charging infrastructure or controlling the charging process via a smartphone.