A techno-economic evaluation of the impact of electric vehicles diffusion on Italian customer billing tariffs

The sales of electric vehicles (EV) are recently experiencing an exponential growth. There is scientific evidence that EVs, in their lifecycle, generate a lower amount of greenhouse gases emissions and local pollution with respect to ICE ones. However, a fast EVs diffusion will increase the load on the power system in a still unclear manner. It is recognized that EV charging is a power intensive operation and that dumb charging strategies will increase security problems for grid management. This will likely happen at the end of business, when a huge quantity of EVs gets connected at the domestic socket at the same time, thus contributing to the ramp up needs from thermal generators to cope with the increasing slope in the “duck curve” at sunset. The presented model estimates the burden that different EV penetration scenarios will have on Italian power system in a short term (2025). This is evaluated in terms of energy flows and load profiles for the charging operations. A behavioural analysis of EV charging operations and a thorough investigation of Italian electricity tariff allows to calculate the economic impact of a base and a strategically regulated scenario. In the regulated scenario, featuring a regulatory toolbox to steer EVs diffusion efficiently, the impact on the power system is mitigated even in case of a larger EV penetration.