Abstract:

The increasing use of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in transport is causing electricity grid stress. Battery swapping stations challenge home charging, but this paper introduces an innovative modeling approach to address research gaps in urban decarbonization pathways, considering home charging and battery swapping stations' implications. The developed method is demonstrated using a case study that comprises a sample residential area equipped with rooftop PV. The comparison of home charging and battery swapping stations shows that both approaches allow significant increases of self-consumption of locally provided electricity over conventional opportunistic home charging, with battery swapping stations evincing the highest increase in flexibility. This increase in added flexibility might, however, not justify a system-wide introduction of battery swapping stations for BEVs, as required surplus batteries and industry-wide standardization entail added efforts over home charging. Policy recommendations derived by this work support building regulations regarding the installation of charging stations and the utilization of PV rooftop potentials considering the anticipated market penetration of BEVs and the possibility to share electricity within local energy hubs.