Electric Vehicle Charging

We’re all responsible for climate change. Moving to a low carbon economy will require a fundamental change to the way that we consume electricity. The Electric Vehicles (‘EVs’) offer the potential to substantially reduce the 22% of UK carbon dioxide emissions that come from road-based transport.

Smart meters enable utilities to manage this significant increase in domestic consumption by allowing interaction with consumers on an individual basis. This flexibility offers the potential for Distributors to manage their networks and for Suppliers to manage their wholesale positions. However, monitoring and responding to the behaviour of hundreds of thousands of customers, all in real time, presents a significant challenge.

Logica, in collaboration with Starview, has applied Analytical Event Processing (AEP) to optimise distribution networks by enabling real time access to smart meters.

AEP can be used to monitor Electric Vehicles (EVs) connecting to the distribution network. A set of AEP business rules deployed at a substation within the network can monitor EV activity on its feeders, compare this with overall load and suspend EV charging in order to keep load within acceptable thresholds for that area of the network. If it doesn’t have sufficient EV flexibility to cope with increasing load, it can escalate to its parent network node where another set of AEP business rules are running. The parent node can take balancing actions across all of its child nodes or, if necessary, escalate to its parent node and so on. This all happens automatically and continuously, in real time.

The combination of smart metering and Analytical Event Processing will transform the way distribution networks are planned and operated and pave the way for the transition to a low carbon economy.

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