A Digital Twin for Electromobility Flexibility Forecast

As efforts for environmental protection become a major priority, Electric Vehicles (EVs) have started to emerge as one of the main components of sustainable traffic systems in cities worldwide.

Indeed, some countries have started to incorporate plans to phase-out conventional vehicles during the next few years with a view to reducing carbon emissions.

However, this shift towards an electrified traffic network involves several challenges that need to be met for EVs to become a mainstream feature.

On the consumers side, one of the most common complaints about EVs is the lack of appropriate charging infrastructures that would make for seamless day-to-day mobility.

On the side of city officials and stakeholders, EVs could have a great impact on the power network infrastructure by overloading congested nodes, but at the same time, EVs could be actively used to benefit the power network if Vehicle-to-Grid connections became commonplace.

In order to leverage these opportunities for e-flexibility, it will first be necessary to model the power requirements and the energy consumption of EVs in time and space, which are linked to the mobility patterns of people in urban areas as they go about their everyday lives. eMob-Twin is a digital-twin based on a macroscopic model in which urban EV mobility is combined with an energy model describing vehicles State-of-Charge, which can run simulations with a fine space/time granularity. eMob-Twin will also include charging stations along with their exact locations and power characteristics. eMob-Twin will thus become a key tool for making full use of the potential advantages of e-flexibility in a wide range of business and industrial contexts, including fleet transportation services, integration of renewables, charging station companies, electricity aggregators, Transmission System Operators, Distribution System Operators, and electricity markets.