An approach for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) integration into Power Systems

The PHEV initiative, recently accelerated for political, environmental and security reasons, offers a possibility to substantially shift energy demand for transportation from crude oil to electricity. PHEV are meant to recharge their batteries through the grid. Their internal combustion engine (ICE) is only used as an ancillary power source. They are easily understood to introduce a new load as well as a distributed, mobile storage to be used for the power system once connected [1]. Inevitably, both utilization schemes lead to an integration of power and transportation systems. Therefore an integrated model for analysis has to be developed. Agent based modelling (ABM) is intuitive as it is widely used in transportation theory [2] and suitability becomes blatant when considering that PHEV are independent entities with different objectives. Therefore, the power system model should incorporate agents and be as general as possible to integrate the yet non existent PHEV fleet. Possible repercussions may not ultimately be confined to the electricity network. For this issue the Energy Hub approach [3] is chosen.