Development of Electric Vehicles: Opportunities and Challenges for Power Grid Companies

Due to the electrification of powertrain system, the Electric Vehicle (EV) has significant advantages in energy conservation and environmental protection, and the industrialization of EV has speeded up globally. The demand of EV for the energy supply is essentially a new type of electricity demand, with the characteristics of mobility, diversity and dispatchability. The development of EVs, on the one hand, would provide an important opportunity for power grid companies to exploit the new market and find a new source of growth, and on the other hand, it would also bring the challenges to the power grid companies, such as to build and operate the swapping/charging service network for the EVs, to realize the smart charging management to obtain the maximum overall benefits, and to update the distribution networks to support the charging/swapping service network in an affordable, efficient and convenient way. The opportunities and challenges are systematically analyzed in this paper. Finally, the experiences of research and practice of State Grid Corporation of China in charging/swapping service network are introduced, and the suggestions for the power grid companies to develop a charging/swapping service network are proposed.