Plug-in electric vehicle interactions with a small office building: An economic analysis using DER-CAM

It is generally believed that plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) offer environmental and energy security advantages compared to conventional vehicles. Policies are stimulating electric transportation deployment, and PEV adoption may grow significantly. New technology and business models are being developed to organize the PEV and building interface and their interaction with the wider grid. This paper analyzes the PEVs´ integration into a building´s Energy Management System (EMS). This relationship is modeled by the Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM), which finds optimal equipment combinations to meet microgrid requirements at minimum cost, carbon footprint, or other criteria. Results show that vehicle batteries are valuable to the building and a contractual relationship that shares the benefit between building and vehicle owner is possible. Under a simple annual fixed payment and energy exchange agreement, vehicles are primarily used to avoid peak demand charges and supply cheaper off-peak electricity to the building during workdays.