A Case Study on Grid Impacts of Electric Vehicles on New York City Power Grid

Abstract

The U.S. electric power industry is anticipating a huge increase in electricity demand in the future due to reformation of the transportation industry. In this work, we focus on electric cars and their impact on the transportation industry as well as the electric grid. The increase in number of electric cars over the years and their growing number indicates that in the future, transportation means are going to largely depend upon electricity to achieve cost and environmental benefits. In other words, in future, the transportation will be impacting the electric grid and vice versa. The surge in electric vehicles on streets particularly in New York City requires the charging infrastructure to support the electricity demand, and mandates proper planning for the electric power grids to keep them upgraded and resilient enough to support the growth in electric vehicles load. In this thesis, the historical minimum and peak load demand data of areas served by Consolidated Edison, an energy company, in New York City have been collected, processed and analyzed to analyze the performance of the future electric grid. The available data of electric vehicles and parking spaces in different regions of New York City were analyzed to study the impact of electric vehicles on future power infrastructure in the City. Also, the charging and parking behavior of vehicles in New York City was analyzed to determine how the time of charging will impact the electricity demand at the different hours of the day at different locations in New York City, and to find ways to minimize the demand in areas where the electric grid network is congested. It was also concluded that in the future, after phasing out of a portion of the gasoline fleets, electric vehicles will be able help to reduce the greenhouse gasses and conserve the environment and help the City and State of New York’s initiatives to achieve their goals of sustainability. Last but not least, more than eighty percent of the New York City electric infrastructure is underground, which means when the demand in peak hours of summer requires upgrading and increasing the feeder capacity, it will require massive capital investment. So, electric vehicles can be used as Energy Storage Resources and can be utilized if needed to shave the peak demand. The data has been analyzed to find out the kind of infrastructure required and the potential locations in different areas of New York City to use the electric vehicles as distributed energy storage resources