Electric vehicle charging as a source of nordic fast frequency reserve—proof of concept

Abstract

Demand‐side flexibility or demand response (DR) has long been recognized as a potential source of balancing capacity. The charging of electric vehicles (EVs) is a known source of flexible capacity, and the vast amount of charging capacity available can be utilized for valuable applications, including ancillary power markets, by controlling the charging sessions according to the needs of the power system. One identified and unexplored potential market for EV DR capacity is the Fast Frequency Reserve (FFR) market for the Nordic system area. This article proposes and demonstrates that a home charger can participate in this extremely fast reacting ancillary service market with only software modifications made to the charger. The biggest challenge in the FFR market is the response time requirement for capacity activation. When a certain frequency limit is exceeded, the activation must happen within 0.7 s in the worst case. In this study, a laboratory test setup was constructed to test the capabilities of the FFR‐enabled EV charger. The tests were conducted by building a laboratory microgrid capable of changing the grid frequency. Additionally, an economic feasibility study was carried out to evaluate the business potential of the concept in Finland. The economic study included an analysis of the concept's potential with different levels of DR service availability. The laboratory tests demonstrated the FFR capabilities of the charger and as a final outcome of the research, the Norwegian transmission system operator (TSO) approved the tested charger as a type‐prequalified FFR‐providing entity. The economic study revealed that the approach has good business potential, primarily because of the almost non‐existent cost side even if the availability rate decreases significantly.