SPAGHETTI: a synthetic data generator for post-Covid electric vehicle usage

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a permanent shift in individuals’ daily routines and driving behaviours, leading to an increase in remote work. There has also been an independent and parallel rise in the adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, electrical storage systems, and electric vehicles (EVs). With remote work, EVs are spending longer periods at home. This offers a chance to reduce EV charging demands on the grid by directly charging EV batteries with solar energy during daylight. Additionally, if bidirectional charging is supported, EVs can serve as a backup energy source day and night. Such an approach fundamentally alters domestic load profiles and boosts the profitability of residential power systems. However, the lack of publicly available post-Covid EV usage datasets has made it difficult to study the impact of recent commuting patterns shifts on EV charging. This paper, therefore, presents SPAGHETTI (Synthetic Patterns & Activity Generator for Home-Energy & Tomorrow’s Transportation Investigation), a tool that can be used for the synthetic generation of realistic EV drive cycles. It takes as input EV user commuting patterns, allowing for personalised modeling of EV usage. It is based on a thorough literature survey on post-Covid work-from-home (WFH) patterns. SPAGHETTI can be used by the scientific community to conduct further research on the large-scale adoption of EVs and their integration into domestic microgrids. As an example of its utility, we study the dependence of EV charge state and EV charging distributions on the degree of working from home and find that there is, indeed, a significant impact of WFH patterns on these critical parameters.