Open Access

Felix Baumgarte, Niklas Eiser, Matthias Kaiser, Kilian Langer, Robert Keller

• The expansion of large-scale charging infrastructure is crucial to cope with growing shares of electric vehicles. However, operators often struggle with profitable operation due to volatile occupancy and high costs for peaks in charging demand. Using information and communication technology may enable smart charging and thereby profitable operation by addressing the challenge of costly peak demand but requires customer flexibility to shift and manage charging processes. Therefore, operators must offer discounts on charging prices for customers to provide flexibility, which in turn mark an additional cost. Here we provide a model to analyze whether the costs to allocate flexibility exceed cost savings through smart charging. The model is evaluated in a case study of a large-scale charging park with real-world data on highway traffic and charging station usage. The results indicate that smart charging can provide net benefits even if operators are required to offer discounts for chargingThe expansion of large-scale charging infrastructure is crucial to cope with growing shares of electric vehicles. However, operators often struggle with profitable operation due to volatile occupancy and high costs for peaks in charging demand. Using information and communication technology may enable smart charging and thereby profitable operation by addressing the challenge of costly peak demand but requires customer flexibility to shift and manage charging processes. Therefore, operators must offer discounts on charging prices for customers to provide flexibility, which in turn mark an additional cost. Here we provide a model to analyze whether the costs to allocate flexibility exceed cost savings through smart charging. The model is evaluated in a case study of a large-scale charging park with real-world data on highway traffic and charging station usage. The results indicate that smart charging can provide net benefits even if operators are required to offer discounts for charging flexibility.…