E-mobility could help lower household electricity prices – researchers

The expansion of electric mobility in Germany could lead to lower household electricity prices, said Fraunhofer Research Institution for Energy Infrastructures and Geothermal Systems IEG and Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in an analysis. On the one hand, e-cars could move their charging periods to the night, thus helping to avoid peak power demand during the day and flattening the demand curve. This would lead to a reduced need for grid expansion, and thus to lower grid fees, which make up a large part of power bills. “By smoothing the consumption curve, the grid is used more efficiently and the 'rent' per unit of electricity consumed decreases,” write the researchers. The second aspect is the battery capacity of electric cars. If this is used to store volatile energy from renewable sources and make it usable, the greenhouse gas emissions of the overall energy system would also decrease. In addition, this lowers the procurement costs in the electricity market, they said. Their simulation with a total of four million e-cars in Germany by 2030 representing a share of 30 percent of private passenger cars in any given grid region showed that household power prices could be 3.5 percent lower than in a system without e-mobility.

Germany plans to have seven to ten million electric cars on the roads by 2030. The country will probably reach its target of having one million fully electric or plug-in hybrid cars on the road this year, government advisors have said recently.