Assessing the Economic Potential of Electric Vehicles to Provide Ancillary Services: The Case of Germany

The Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) concept is a promising possibility for the integration of electric vehicles (EVs) into the power grid. This article presents an economic evaluation of EVs participating in the ancillary service market (primary, secondary and tertiary regulation) for the case of Germany, based on a price data set from 2011 and 2012. We examine the economic potential of nine general options to participate in the regulation market based on real-life EV specifications, connection powers and regulation energy prices. Results show that in the most profitable case a maximum average yearly profit of 730.31 € per vehicle is possible for negative regulation with payment direction TSO to provider in the secondary regulation market. Furthermore a sensitivity analysis is performed for all of the analyzed participation scenarios in order to identify crucial parameters for a possible V2G implementation. Major parameters for the successful implementation of V2G are the provided power per vehicle, the time an EV is available to the grid and the variable energy storage costs it incurs.