Electric vehicles and renewable energy sources are collectively being developed as a synergetic implementation for smart grids. In this context, smart charging of electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technologies are seen as a way forward to achieve economic, technical and environmental benefits. The implementation of these technologies requires the cooperation of the end-electricity user, the electric vehicle owner, the system operator and policy makers. These stakeholders pursue different and sometime conflicting objectives. In this paper, the concept of multi-objective-techno-economic-environmental optimisation is proposed for scheduling electric vehicle charging/discharging. End user energy cost, battery degradation, grid interaction and CO2 emissions in the home micro-grid context are modelled and concurrently optimised for the first time while providing frequency regulation. The results from three case studies show that the proposed method reduces the energy cost, battery degradation, CO2 emissions and grid utilisation by 88.2%, 67%, 34% and 90% respectively, when compared to uncontrolled electric vehicle charging. Furthermore, with multiple optimal solutions, in order to achieve a 41.8% improvement in grid utilisation, the system operator needs to compensate the end electricity user and the electric vehicle owner for their incurred benefit loss of 27.34% and 9.7% respectively, to stimulate participation in energy services.
Dynamic energy contracts, offering hourly varying day-ahead prices for electricity, create opportunities for a residential Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) to not just optimize the self-consumption of solar energy but also capitalize on price differences. This work examines the financial potential and impact on the self-consumption of a residential BESS that is controlled based on these dynamic energy prices for PV-equipped households in the Netherlands, where this novel type of contract is available. Currently, due to the Dutch Net Metering arrangement (NM) for PV panels, there is no financial incentive to increase self-consumption, but policy shifts are debated, affecting the potential profitability of a BESS. In the current situation, the recently proposed NM phase-out and the general case without NM are studied using linear programming to derive optimal control strategies for these scenarios. These are used to assess BESS profitability in the latter cases combined with 15 min smart meter data of 225 Dutch households to study variations in profitability between households. It follows that these variations are linked to annual electricity demand and feed-in pre-BESS-installation. A residential BESS that is controlled based on day-ahead prices is currently not generally profitable under any of these circumstances: Under NM, the maximum possible annual yield for a 5 kWh/3.68 kW BESS with day-ahead prices as in 2023 is EUR 190, while in the absence of NM, the annual yield per household ranges from EUR 93 to EUR 300. The proposed NM phase-out limits the BESS’s profitability compared to the removal of NM.
The idea that technologies influence society—both positively and negatively—is not new. This is mainly the terrain of the philosophy and the ethics of technolo-gy research. Similarly, design research aims to help create new technologies in line with individual, social, and societal needs and values. Against this backdrop, it seems essential to expose relations between design and philosophy of tech-nology research, particularly from a methodological perspective. The main goal of this paper is to suggest a preliminary overview of methods and approaches that can inspire and inform interdisciplinary collaboration and, with that, sys-tematic engagement with ethics in design processes. Through interdisciplinary exchange, we propose a preliminary typology of ethics-informed methods and approaches based on two main dimensions, namely theory-grounded approaches to theoretically-flexible techniques and assessment to accompaniment. This mapping intends to help navigate the ethical qualities of selected methods from both disciplines, and it aims to create a platform for fruitful interdisciplinary conversations.
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