Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Electricity Tariffs on Residential Charging Loads in China

With the rapid development of electric vehicles, the influence of electric vehicle charging load on the residential power grid is becoming more and more significant, and the requirement for coordinated charging is thus increasing as well. Extensive studies have investigated methods to guide users for coordinated charging; however, due to the lack of real-world data, there is still a gap between most simulation models and practical implementation. To solve this problem, in this paper, a comparative analysis of residential charging loads under different electricity tariffs is proposed to provide the real-world impact of electricity tariffs on coordinated charging. More than 20,000 private electric vehicles’ charging loads in three cities in China are collected. By proposing a new set of metrics suitable for residential charging load evaluation, a comparative analysis of the residential charging load profiles in different cities with and without electricity tariffs is conducted. The analysis shows that the electricity tariffs have a very significant impact on the peak-load shifting of residential charging load. However, due to a large number of electric vehicles automatically starting charging during low tariff hours, the charging load always suddenly increased at the beginning of the low tariff period, whose negative effects require to be critically addressed in real-world applications.