EVs fleet contribution in the french balancing market

Climate change concerns, sustained increase of oil price and energy security reasons have reignited interest on EVs. Nowadays, integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) to the existing generation mix is becoming one of the crucial mechanisms to mitigate CO2 emissions. However, the main challenge of RES is their variable output. To cope up with the significant increase of RES and their variable output, the electricity system needs flexible generation sources more than ever. Consequently, researchers sturdily recommend the use of EVs as a good complement to the intermittent sources. Therefore, this paper deals with EVs fleet contribution in the French balancing market which is at the heart of maintaining the system balance. To scrutinize the contribution of EVs fleet in the French balancing system and quantify their financial gain, this paper used downward energy volume and downward prices obtained from 2008 to 2014. To specifically identify the financial gain of the EVs, two charging situations (charging at home and (at home and workplace)) and 3kW EVSE capacity were used. The result of the paper shows that for the EVs fleet manager, participating in the balancing market with charging facility at home benefits more than having charging facility at both home and workplace which is directly related to the battery’s state of charge