Flexibility Reserve Provision by an Electric Vehicle Fleet Coupled to a Prosumer Building

The increasing penetration of Electric Vehicles (EVs) will pose issues in both transmission and distribution networks, especially when coupled to Renewable Energy Resources (RESs). This paper aims to present an Energy Management System (EMS) for the optimal operation of a prosumer building, owned by a freight delivery company, equipped with Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind Turbine (WT) units and with a charging stations dedicated to an EV fleet, composed of 10 electric vans. The EMS, modeled as a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem, aims to minimize the net operating costs of the facility related to the exchange of electricity with the distribution network. As a novelty, the participation of prosumers in a flexibility market, by offering upward and downward active power reserves through their EV fleets, is explored. Additionally, the application of Vehicle-to-Building (V2B) technology is explored. The results of the tailored EMS demonstrated that coupling the V2B technique with the ability to offer upward and downward reserves can contribute to a reduction in the facility's annual net costs of up to 30%, which may be of great interest to the prosumer.