Analyzing the Impact of Electric Vehicles on Local Energy Systems using Digital Twins

The electrification of the transportation and heating sector, the so-called sector coupling, is one of the core elements to achieve independence from fossil fuels. As it highly affects the electricity demand, especially on the local level, the integrated modeling and simulation of all sectors is a promising approach for analyzing design decisions or complex control strategies. This paper analyzes the increase in electricity demand resulting from sector coupling, mainly due to integrating electric vehicles into urban energy systems. Therefore, we utilize a digital twin of an existing local energy system and extend it with a mobility simulation model to evaluate the impact of electric vehicles on the distribution grid level. Our findings indicate a significant rise in annual electricity consumption attributed to electric vehicles, with home charging alone resulting in a 78% increase. However, we demonstrate that integrating photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems can effectively mitigate this rise.
Comment: Paper is to be published in Proceedings of the 2024 Winter Simulation Conference