The Feasibility of using V2G to Face the Peak Demand in Warm

Countries

Ibrahem A. Almansour, Enrico H. Gerding and Gary Wills

Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, U.K.

Keywords:

V2G, Peak Demand.

Abstract:

As a result of the very difﬁcult weather in Saudi Arabia during the summer, there is too high power peak

demand in the grid and this is expected to increase in the next decade. To ﬁx this problem, power consumers

should participate in the power production. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G), one of the efﬁcient sustainable technolo-

gies, can offer this opportunity. It is deﬁned as a concept where electric vehicle (EV) provides electric to the

grid when parked. This investigation looks at the feasibility of using V2G to mitigate the problem of highest

electricity peak demand in the summer period in one of the warmest countries of the world (Saudi Arabia). We

conduct a survey in order to serve this issue and we use information from Saudi Arabia electricity authority.

We found that, V2G is a promising solution to the peak demand challenge in the summer in Saudi Arabia since

there is about 80% of the sample interested in using V2G technology. Moreover, 90% of the participants used

their vehicles less than 4 hours daily. Furthermore, in the summer period, most of the participants park their

vehicles for the longest time between 13:00 to 18:00, which is the peak demand period.

1 INTRODUCTION

The massive increasing in the electricity peak de-

mand at the summer period is one of the most im-

portant issues should be considered by the electricity

companies around the world, speciﬁcally in the war-

mest countries. Electricity & Cogeneration Regula-

tory Authority (ECRA) state that the electricity peak

demand is too high in the summer in Saudi Arabia and

they expect that to increased massively in the next de-

cade (ECRA, 2011). One of the most promising solu-

tions that can be used to support the grid to face this

problem is Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. It is

deﬁned as a method whereby electric vehicles (EVs)

provide electricity power to the smart grid when not

being used. The majority of the vehicles are used just

10% of the time, so they can be used to offer the po-

wer electricity to the grid during this time when they

parked (Kempton and Tomi

c, 2005). Specially, if the

EV drivers know about that, they might gain money

because of the contributing in V2G systems, about

2500 3000 $ annually (Tomas, 2013).

As ECRA report, the daily load consumption

curve is increased massively through the summer pe-

riods in Saudi Arabia. Thus, one of the suggested so-

lutions which has been provided by ECRA is that a

cost of energy in the summer seasons should be dou-

bled that cost in winter seasons. Thus, it can be con-

cluded that, the peak demand in Saudi Arabia is very

high in the summer period and this issue is a difﬁ-

cult challenge for the Saudi Electricity Company that

should be considered. On the other hand, as we men-

tioned in the V2G deﬁnition, there is a chance to sup-

port the power grid by the EV when it parked so we

inspired by this idea and we conducted a survey that

investigate the feasibility of applying V2G in Saudi

Arabia in order to support the grid to face the very

high peak demand in the summer period. This matter

is becoming more important if we know that, ECRA

predicts that to increase signiﬁcantly in the next de-

cade. The rest of the paper is organised as follows.

The related work will be discussed in Section 2. Next,

the research methodology will be described in Section

3. Then, Section 4 provides the Results and Discus-

sion. Finally, the ﬁndings and conclusion of our study

will be discussed in section 5.

2 RELATED WORK

Before we discuss the results of our survey, we have

to clarify that we choose to use vehicle usage behavior

instead of drivers behavior since the drivers behavior

238

A. Almansour, I., H. Gerding, E. and Wills, G.

The Feasibility of using V2G to Face the Peak Demand in Warm Countries.

DOI: 10.5220/0006661502380242

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS 2018), pages 238-242

ISBN: 978-989-758-293-6

frequently use to deﬁne the drivers emotional which

is not discussed in our study.

Additionally, nowadays, the EVs on the street are

very rare. Therefore, it is difﬁcult to collect the real

EV vehicle usage behavior consequently we assume

the V2G drivers behave like any other vehicle drivers

and this assumption has been used broadly in the stu-

dies that review EV drivers such as (Wu et al., 2010).

Moreover, our study is consistent with (Matar

et al., 2015) study which is aiming to reduce the fuel

consumption cost in Saudi Arabia without increasing

at the end customers costs side. In more details, their

work discusses the problem from the service provi-

ders sides but it has not considered how the sustaina-

ble technologies such as V2G could help in this issue.

Indeed, our work could be used as one of the robust

evidences for the efﬁciency of applying new policies

that encourage the consumers in Saudi Arabia to use

sustainable technologies and speciﬁcally V2G in or-

der to face the predicting massively increasing in the

power demand and without effect the power economy.

There are many researches in the literature that re-

view the travel behavior matter. For instance, there is

a published dataset of the National Household Travel

Survey (NHTS, 2016), Danish National Travel Sur-

vey (Christiansen and Skougaard, 2015), the Trafﬁc

Choices Study dataset collected by the Puget Sound

Regional (Council, 2011), and the University of Win-

nipeg data (Danny Blair, 2011).

To the best of our knowledge, none of the abo-

vementioned datasets are appropriate for our study

goal since none of them are considered the feasibi-

lity of applying V2G in a warm country, specially, in

the summer season when the electricity peak demands

being very high and the drivers parked their vehicles

for long period because of this difﬁcult weather.

Figure 1: The participants’ age.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section describes the survey that has been used

in this study. After that, the study limitations are dis-

cussed.

Figure 2: The participants’ highest educational attainment.

3.1 Study Overview

We divide the survey into two sections. Firstly, we

ask the participants about their demographic informa-

tion. Afterward, we ask the participants about their

cars battery usage preferences (fuel in the conventio-

nal cars) but we are not going to discuss this part here

because it is out of this paper scope. However, this

part will be the core of our future work. Finally, we

examine the feasibility of applying V2G in Saudi Ara-

bia. In this study, online-based survey is used. Partici-

pants are invited through social networks, and e-mails

and are offered with a web link to the survey. Any in-

dividual has a Saudi driver license considered a proper

participant in this study. About 699 participants ans-

wered this survey. Further, the participants are chosen

randomly.

3.2 Study Limitations

This study is investigating the feasibility of applying

V2G to support the smart grid in the peak time in the

warm countries. It has some strengths points, howe-

ver, it has some weaknesses.

The ﬁrst weakness point is that, the participants

are only the men and this since we consider the pe-

ople they have a driver license in Saudi Arabia and

till now only the men can drive ofﬁcially in the Saudi

Arabia. Furthermore, we cannot capture the entire po-

pulation since this survey is an online survey therefore

we may miss some kinds of individuals such as the el-

derly men who have not used the Internet.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Now, we are going to discuss the results in this

section. Firstly, Figure 1 illustrates, the majority of

the drivers who participate in this study are between

36 - 60 years old, 46.35%. On the other hand, the

minority is over 60 years old, 3.58% and this sensible

The Feasibility of using V2G to Face the Peak Demand in Warm Countries

239

since the individuals over 60 are less than the others in

term of using the social network where we distribute

our study.

Moreover, in the highest educational attainment

for the participants we found that, as the Figurer 2

shows the highest number of the participants is the in-

dividuals got the Bachelor degree. Afterward, the stu-

dents who are under bachelor. Next, with the signiﬁ-

cant different of number, the individuals who got the

Master degree, and the minority are the participants

got the PhD. Actually, we believe this is a reasonable

distribution for educational attainment for the sample

in a normal social. Furthermore, about the half of par-

ticipants work in the public sector, and 20.37% work

in the private sector, and the rest of them do not work.

In terms of the daily trips number that the drivers

make we found that, as Figure 3 illustrates the drivers

who make 3 - 4 trips daily are the highest number of

the participants for about 40.07%. Additionally, the

second highest number is the individuals who make

1- 2 trips, about 37.94%. Afterward, the drivers who

make 5 - 6 trips are only about 16% of the sample.

To capture the fourth option and by applying thema-

tic analysis technique, the most repeated response is

greater than or equal to 10 times. Thus, we count that

as a forth option.

Figure 3: The number of trips the participants make daily.

Also, as Figure 4 shows about the half of the sam-

ple park their vehicle for the longest period between

00:00 to 6:00, and we think this is since the indivi-

duals sleep on this time. The second highest is bet-

ween 07:00 to 12:00 where the participants are in their

workplace or their school in this period. Lastly, on the

very close percentages, the individuals who park be-

tween 19:00 to 23:00, and those who park in other

periods which have not been described in this study.

Additionally, As Figure 5 shows, there are 40%

of the participants who have more than one vehicle

which make the V2G technology more efﬁcient and

this will be discussed in the ﬁnding section (Section

5).

Ultimately, to examine the feasibility of applying

the V2G in Saudi Arabia, we asked twofold questions

Figure 4: The longest period through the day the partici-

pants park their cars.

Figure 5: The number of cars the participants own.

at the end of the study.

• Are you interested to using the EV instead of the

fuel vehicles if you receive some economic and

environmental advantages?

• If you will receive more economical advantages

from using V2G, are you interested to using the

V2G?

The majority of the participants chose to drive EV,

about 85% , as Figure 6 shows, which is good indica-

tion. For the remainders, by using the thematic ana-

lysis technique, these responses are the most repeated

response for the reason of the sample selects to do not

use the EV. The ﬁrst reason is that, the participants

think that the EV is less than the conventional cars in

Figure 6: Choosing between EV or conventional vehicles.

VEHITS 2018 - 4th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems

240

terms of performance. Furthermore, it requires long

time to recharge. Further, the EV until now is very ex-

pensive if we compare it with the conventional cars.

Finally, the existing Saudi Arabian infrastructures do

not support this kind of technology.

Before we discuss the study ﬁndings and provide

the conclusion, we will brieﬂy analyze the power data

that conﬁrms there is a peak demand problem at the

summer in Saudi Arabia. As Figure 7 illustrates,

which is typical daily load curve during summer, the

peak demand at friday is more than the other days be-

cause it is the social day in the Saudi Arabia and other

Muslim countries where the people gathering more

than other days. In a weekday, at 1:00 the curve is

decreasing steadily until 7:00, where the curve is in-

creasing gradually with some ﬂuctuations until 18:00.

Then, the peak curve is decreasing until the end of

the day. From this ﬁgure, we can conclude that the

peak demand period at the summer in Saudi Arabia

is between 7:00 and 18:00. Further, we got ﬁgure 9

from the Saudi Electricity company which is an up-

dated version for the current peak demand, it is for 4

days in August 2017, as the ﬁgure shows, it is almost

same as the ﬁgure 7 which is for 2015. In the follo-

wing section we will discuss the study ﬁndings and

conclusions.

5 STUDY FINDINGS AND

CONCLUSIONS

In this section, ﬁrstly we will discuss the study ﬁn-

dings as points, then we will provide our conclusions

and future work.

• About 40% of the sample has more than one vehi-

cle, this gives a chance to them to use the spare

vehicle to trade in the power market with more

relaxed conditions. Accordingly, we expect the

V2G technology might play a crucial role in the

Saudi power market.

• Most of the participants (about 90%) are used

their vehicles less than 4 hours (1 - 2) or (3 - 4)

which means the vehicle are not being used about

83% of the time. Thus, we can use this time to

trade with the power market without disturbing

the drivers, if we apply the V2G concept in a cle-

ver way.

• About 85% of the participants are interested on

using EV generally and V2G technology speciﬁ-

cally which is a promising results if we consider

that happens in a society has not has any aware-

ness about these technologies. Consequently, ba-

sed on these results we belief if we encourage the

Figure 7: Typical daily load curve during the summer.

Figure 8: The longest period through the day the partici-

pants park their cars during the summer.

people and educate them about these technologies

these numbers might be increased.

• In the ﬁgure 7 we use the information that has

been provided by ECRA (ECRA, 2015) for the

typical daily load curve during summer and we re-

ﬂect the information that we collect from the par-

ticipants for the longest period they parked their

vehicles in the summer. As the ﬁgure 7 shows,

the most interesting ﬁnding is that the longest pe-

riod time the drivers park their vehicles during

the summer ( between 13:00 - 18:00 and between

7:00 -12:00 which represent about the 60% of the

sample as ﬁgure 8 illustrates) is the same period of

the peak demand. Thus, we can claim that, using

V2G in the Saudi Arabia could support the grid

to face the predicting peak demand at the summer

period in the next decade.

In conclusion, this study considered the feasibility

of using the V2G to face the electricity peak demand

The Feasibility of using V2G to Face the Peak Demand in Warm Countries

241

Figure 9: Peak demands for 4 days in August 2017.

in the summer season in the warmest countries. As

we discussed earlier, ECRA states that, nowadays, in

the summer the power peak demand is very high in

Saudi Arabia, and they predict that to rise greatly in

the following ten years. Based on the survey results,

we belief there is a promising opportunity to the V2G

technology to support the smart grid in the high peak

demand in the summer.

For future work, we will develop an algorithm to

trade with the power market on behalf of the V2G dri-

vers in aim of maximizing their proﬁts by understan-

ding their vehicle usage behavior. To do so, we are

going to deal with two types of uncertainties, which

are the vehicle usage uncertainty and the power mar-

ket price uncertainty. Moreover, we are planning to

quantify the beneﬁts of using V2G to support the grid

at the peak demand in the summer in Saudi Arabia as

a second phase of this study.

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