Smart Recharging of Electrical Vehicles with Battery Switching Technology

In recent years the climate crisis gains growing attention thanks to the work of the activists. The increased sensitivity towards the environment did not always translate into efficient actions actuated by the governments and this fight lacks a global effort. However, some sectors are changing. Transports, which are among the main cause of pollution and greenhouse gases emission, has started a process of abandoning combustion engines to move to 100% electric powertrain. Indeed, the fleet of electric vehicles (EV) is getting more and more numerous and the rate of EV adoption is expected to increase. Although the high penetration of EVs is a good news for air quality and the environment, it brings issues that need to be addressed. Firstly, the effort of reduced pollution could be nullified if EVs are not combined with a renewable energy source. The batteries of the cars required a large amount of energy to be charged and this could cause an extreme load on the grid. This thesis investigated a scenario in which EVs are widely used and the gas stations have been substituted by the battery switching stations, i.e. platforms that are able to substitute the flat battery of a vehicle with a fully charged one. These stations are equipped with an array of photovoltaic panels that produces energy for the batteries and host charging and fully charged batteries. Hence, they provide flexibility to the grid and could prevent or even solve congestions, serving as energy storage stations and becoming agents of the smart grid. This thesis aims to assess the feasibility of the battery switching stations. To do that a discrete-event simulator has been built to study the system so that it is possible to evaluate how the station reacts with a certain traffic pattern with certain parameters. By dimensioning the capacity of the batteries and the number of solar pan1 els, this study observes that to compensate for the large amount of energy demanded by the vehicles a large number of panels is required, and adopting some charging strategies it is possible to reduce the costs.