Business cases for degradation-aware bidirectional charging of residential users and heavy-duty vehicle fleets

Abstract

In the push towards decarbonizing the transport sector, integrating electric vehicles (EVs) is crucial. Vehicle-to-everything services can address concerns about EV acceptance and grid integration, but viable business models are necessary to incentivize user participation. This paper presents a techno-economic mixed integer linear programming optimization model to assess the feasibility of bidirectional charging for residential users (RUs) and heavy-duty fleet vehicles. The model ensures proper battery degradation management and integrates renewable energy sources at charging locations. Price arbitrage (PA), specifically vehicle-to-home (V2H) and residential vehicle-to-grid (V2G), is explored for RUs. For larger EV fleets, V2G PA and V2G combined with frequency containment reserve for disturbances (FCR-D) are investigated. Business cases guide the optimization, simulating a year of operation in Eastern Denmark. The results are compared to a baseline scenario with no bidirectional charging capability. RUs achieve average cost savings of 176 € with a payback period of 5 to 23 years, depending on the charging equipment supplier. V2H proves most suitable for remote users with flexible charging patterns. While EV fleets do not see significant savings with V2G alone, V2G combined with FCR-D yields savings of 330  thousand  € with a payback period of 3 to 17 years. Challenges remain due to the rarity of commercially available bidirectional charging equipment and limited data on driving patterns. However, our analysis shows that bidirectional charging offers substantial financial incentives for both RUs and fleet managers, promoting EV adoption and advancing transport sector decarbonization.