1960
4, NOVEMBER 2012
Stochastic Modeling of Power Demand Due to
EVs Using Copula
Alicja Lojowska, Student Member, IEEE, Dorota Kurowicka, Georgios Papaefthymiou, Member, IEEE, and
Lou van der Sluis, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—The driving patterns characterizing electric vehicles
(EVs) are stochastic and, as a consequence, the electrical load due
to EVs inherits their randomness. This paper presents a Monte
Carlo procedure for the derivation of load due to EVs based on
a fully stochastic method for modeling transportation patterns.
Under the uncontrolled domestic charging scenario three variables
are found to be crucial: the time a vehicle leaves home, the time
a vehicle arrives home, and the distance traveled in between. A
detailed transportation dataset is used to derive marginal cumu-
lative distribution functions of the variables of interest. Since the
variables are statistically dependent, a joint distribution function
is built using a copula function. Subsequently, simulated EV trips
are combined with a typical charging profile so that the energy con-
tribution to the system is computed. The procedure is applied to
analyze the effect of the EV load on the national power demand
of The Netherlands under different market penetration levels and
day/night electricity tariff scenarios.
Index Terms—Copula, dependence structure, domestic
charging, EVs load, price incentives, transportation dataset,
uncontrolled charging.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE development of electric vehicles (EVs) is currently
driven by the need to decrease reliance on foreign oil sup-
plies and to reduce CO emissions. Governmental plans in many
countries support a significant increase in the number of EVs
on the roads by the next decade. A respective scenario for The
Netherlands assumes there will be one million EVs on the road
between the years 2020 and 2025 [1].
The future deployment of EVs leads to an increase in elec-
tricity demand. To assess the effects on the power system, an
estimation of EVs power demand is required. In the related lit-
erature, a number of methods have been proposed for the pre-
diction of the load of future EVs. These methods are usually
Manuscript received July 13, 2011; revised December 01, 2011; accepted
March 03, 2012. Date of publication May 01, 2012; date of current version Oc-
tober 17, 2012. This work was supported by SenterNovem, an agency of the
Dutch Ministry of Economical Affairs, under Project IOP EMVT 08103. Paper
no. TPWRS-00940-2011.
A. Lojowska and L. van der Sluis are with the Electric Power Systems Group,
Delft University of Technology, Delft 2628 CD, The Netherlands (e-mail: a.lo-
jowska@tudelft.nl; l.vanderSluis@tudelft.nl).
G. Papaefthymiou is with the Ecofys Germany GmbH and with the Electric
Power Systems Group, Delft University of Technology, Delft 2628 CD, The
Netherlands (e-mail: g.papaefthymiou@tudelft.nl).
D. Kurowicka is with the Institute for Applied Mathematics, Delft University
of Technology, Delft 2628 CD, The Netherlands (e-mail: d.kurowicka@tudelft.
nl).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2012.2192139
0885-8950/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO.
based on driving patterns that are taken into account by the di-
rect use of data of real commuting habits (single realizations).
For example, in [3] EVs power demand is derived based on rep-
resentative driving patterns obtained through clustering of data
from the Danish National Travel Survey. The same dataset is
also utilized in [4] to create average plug-in patterns that are
input for studying the optimal configuration of an integrated
power and transport system. The work in [5] presents a method-
ology for modeling EVs that uses a full-year input time series
of driving patterns obtained from an analogous travel survey for
Finland. Axsen et al. [10] derive PHEV energy consumption by
employing data collected through a web-based survey of new
vehicle buyers in California. The simulation studies carried out
by NREL [8] and, under the REHEV project [7], were based on
driving habits of the St. Louis population recorded using GPS
technology [9]. Other approaches utilize national statistics [6],
e.g., daily average distance or even hypothetical transportation
demand [16]. In [17], a Monte Carlo technique is used to gen-
erate a set of future EVs’ electricity demand profiles based on
information about an expected future EVs’ load and an expected
amount of uncertainty involved. However, the literature lacks
methods that allow the modeling of the inherent stochasticity of
the driving patterns, as elaborated in [11].
Contrary to the direct use of data, stochastic simulation
methods rely on transportation data (typically travel surveys) in
order to capture the uncertainty of the main variables describing
the behavior of EVs. This paper presents the setup of such a
stochastic method; the EV’s power demand can be simulated
using three random variables: the time of arrival at charging
area, time of departure from charging area, and distance trav-
eled in between. The variables are found to be correlated and to
have nonstandard distribution functions. In such a situation, to
perform a stochastic modeling a copula function has to be used
in creating a joint distribution function.
The stochastic simulation setup is used for the generation of
synthetic datasets that comply with the uncertainty of the inputs.
These synthetic datasets capture the whole uncertainty of the
behavior of EVs (contrary to single realizations) and are scal-
able to different EV populations (allowing uncertainty reduction
effects in large populations). Moreover, such stochastic setups
can be used for the design of systems when transportation data
are not readily available or future changes in transportation be-
havior are expected1.
1In the latter case, expert judgement techniques can be used to extract infor-
mation on probability distributions of the variables characterizing commuting
habits of the future population [19].
LOJOWSKA et al.: STOCHASTIC MODELING OF POWER DEMAND DUE TO EVS USING COPULA
This paper is structured as follows. Section II covers informa-
tion regarding the transportation dataset. In Section III, the vari-
ables representing the driving patters are studied together with
the statistical relationships between them. A modeling method-
ology is proposed. In Section IV, a Monte Carlo simulation is
presented and is followed by Section V, where the results are
discussed. Conclusions and future work are given in Section VI.
II. TRANSPORTATION DATASET
Statistical information on the variables representing driving
patterns are extracted from the transportation data of the year
2008 provided by the Dutch Ministry of Transportation [2]. Per-
sons taking part in the transportation survey were eligible to give
details regarding trips they made in The Netherlands during the
elicitation period. The dataset includes information about com-
muting activities like time of departure, address of departure’s
place, main purpose of the commuting, mean of transport, ad-
dress of the place a person arrived and time of arrival, the dis-
tance of the trip, and so on.
A. h2h Trips
The paper focuses on domestic charging, i.e., the case when
charging infrastructure is organized in the way that vehicle
users have recharge access only at their home. From the system
point of view, the timing and EVs’ power demand are of
interest. Recharging an EV’s battery can take place in the time
interval which starts at the moment a driver arrives home and
finishes upon departure from home. The battery state of charge
(SoC) of an EV is strongly related to the distance traveled
since the last charging. Therefore, in modeling driving patterns
for the load computation we are interested in the following
variables: the time a vehicle leaves home, the time a vehicle
arrives home and the overall distance traveled since the last
visit at home. The sequence of trips which started at home one
day and finished the same or next day is referred throughout
the paper as an h2h trip, e.g., a sequence of the following trips:
home work shop home. According to the dataset, 75%
of the respondents had a single h2h trip in a day whereas 21%
a double h2h trip and the rest had three or more h2h trips. The
paper presents the modeling of single as well as double trips
since they comprise the significant majority of trips.2
Respectively, other charging infrastructures can be consid-
ered as well. If one focuses on charging at home and at work,
the set of variables would be extended by the time a vehicle ar-
rives at work and the time a vehicle departures from work.
B. Potential Users
The possibility to charge the battery only at home makes the
EVs suitable for people whose typical distance of an h2h trip
does not exceed the maximum driving range of the vehicle’s
battery. Potential EV users are therefore chosen according to the
maximum driving range of a vehicle’s battery. In the simulation
2The higher order trips could be modeled as well, but they require more vari-
ables to consider. A bigger transportation dataset would have to be used in order
to provide good quality estimates of the respective model parameters.
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1961
Fig. 1. Charging profile of the Nissan Altra battery.
studies, the case of Nissan Altra EV with lithium-ion battery3 is
used as example [6], [18]. The battery-charging profile is shown
in Fig. 1. The capacity of the battery is equal to 29.07 kWh. The
maximum driving range depends on several factors, including
climate control, speed, and driving style, and, consequently, dif-
fers for urban and freeway area. We assume a maximum driving
range of 130 km [6], [18]. In order to prevent a so-called range
anxiety, the subset of potential users are chosen according to the
maximum range of 110 km so that at least about 10% of energy
would be left after an h2h trip.
III. SIMULATION APPROACH
Modeling single as well as double h2h trips requires capturing
the stochastic behavior of the random variables representing
them. Modeling of single h2h trips requires using three vari-
ables: start-time , end-time of the h2h trip, and trav-
eled distance , whereas a double h2h trip needs six vari-
ables: start-time, end-time, and traveled distance of the first h2h
trip and the second h2h trip .
This section presents the data analysis of an h2h trip in three
steps. In the first step, the one-dimensional (1-D) marginal dis-
tribution of the variables representing h2h trips are derived. The
second step involves examining the stochastic dependence be-
tween the variables. In the last step, a stochastic simulation ap-
proach is presented which enables the modeling of the variables
together with their dependence structure.
A. Marginal Distributions
The probability distributions of the start times of h2h trips are
shown in Fig. 2. We can see that the start-time of a single h2h
trip and the time of the first departure from home in a double h2h
trip are described by similar distributions. In both cases,
a high percentage of drivers tend to leave their home between
7 and 9 am, most likely to commute to work. After this peak,
the probabilities gradually decrease and, for a single h2h trip,
exhibit some less significant peaks around 1 and 7 pm. It should
be noted that, since a vehicle user is going to make a second
trip in the case of a double h2h trip, the probability distribution
function (pdf) of is less concentrated in the evening hours
than the pdf of . The pdf of (the start-time of the second
3The method can be applied with any type of batteries, also those of plug in
hybrid EVs (PHEV). In the case of PHEVs, the choice of potential users would
have to take into account the maximum distance using both an electric motor
and an internal combustion engine.
1962 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2012

Fig. 4. Distributions of traveled distance of a single and double h2h trip.

Fig. 2. Distributions of start-times of a single and double h2h trip.

B. Dependence Structure
In order to verify if there is dependence among the above-
mentioned variables, the measure of rank correlation [21] is ap-
plied. The rank correlation measures a monotonic relationship
between variables [20], [21]. If tends to increase when in-
creases, the rank correlation coefficient is positive and
vice versa. The rank correlation coefficient can take the values
between 1 and 1.
Rank correlation derived for the variables representing a
single h2h trip: , , and are given by

(1)

The rank correlation for a double h2h trip is computed

based on the variables , , , , , and as
Fig. 3. Distributions of end-times of a single and double h2h trip. The time follows:
scale is extended to the next day.

h2h trip in a double h2h trip) reaches two peaks at 1 pm and at

7 pm, where it is the highest.
Fig. 3 presents the probability distributions of arrival times.
The peak for a single h2h trip occurs between 4 and 6 pm, when
people tend to return from work. The histograms of arrival times
for double h2h trips have peaks in the same interval but also
during late morning and late evening . The hours
higher than 24 on the -axis indicate that an h2h trip started one
day and finished the next day. Information on end-time of h2h
trips are crucial in computing the starting time of recharging
vehicles batteries. Under the assumption that there are no price
incentives, Fig. 3 shows that the recharging can take place at
any hour of a day.
The pdfs of traveled distance between home and home are
shown in Fig. 4. For all types of h2h trips, short distances are
the most common, i.e., up to 20 km. Distances of double h2h
trips ( and ) are characterized by a higher occurrence
of low values than the respective distances of a single h2h trip
, which is a consequence of making multiple h2h trips per
day instead of one. No distance exceeds 110 km due to the as-
sumptions discussed in Section II-B.
(2)
Testing the hypothesis of no correlation against the alterna-
tive that there is a nonzero correlation was applied to the ele-
ments of the correlation matrices. All coefficients in the ma-
trix are found to be statistically significant assuming a 0.05 level
of significance. In the matrix, all coefficients are significant
except from , , and . This suggests no
monotonic dependence between the starting time of the first trip
, and all of the variables representing the second h2h trip
.
It can be observed from the correlation matrices that the
h2h distance is negatively correlated with the departure time
, which indicates that the later a
person leaves home, the shorter distance she/he travels. The
relation of the h2h distance with the arrival time is opposite
: the longer the distance that
is traveled the later she/he comes back home. The relations
between departure and arrival times seem to be different for

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LOJOWSKA et al.: STOCHASTIC MODELING OF POWER DEMAND DUE TO EVS USING COPULA 1963

different trip types. For the single h2h trip, the dependence
coefficient is equal to 0.35, whereas in the first trip in the
double h2h trip is close to zero, indicating a lack
of monotonic dependence between the variables. The rank
correlation coefficient between departure and arrival times of
the second h2h trip is 0.8, which is relatively high.
The rank coefficient of arrival time of the first trip and the
departure time of the second trip also have a relatively
high value.

C. Modeling Using Copula Functions

As shown in Section III-B, dependencies exist between the Fig. 5. Scatter plots between variables in uniform domain. (a) versus
variables representing both types of trips. Therefore, it is cru- . (b) versus .
cial to model the correlation structure between them in order to
obtain simulations which reflect the features of the input data.
All of the individual variables of interest have different marginal
distributions. In this case, a multivariate joint distribution func-
tion can be created using a copula function [20], [21], which
represents the dependence structure between the variables. A
copula is a function that joins univariate distribution functions to
form multivariate distribution functions. Specifically, in accor-
dance with Sklar’s theorem [22], the continuous random vari-
ables with cumulative distribution functions (CDFs)
, respectively, are joined by copula if their joint
distribution function can be expressed as

Fig. 6. (a) Scatter plot between simulated and simulated . (b) Q-Q
plot of simulated and original variable .
Denoting for , where are
realizations of uniform variables , respectively, the
above formula can be rewritten as
However, because the and variables satisfy the relation
, their scatter diagram, shown in Fig. 5(b), reveals a
nonstandard dependence structure. Such a nonstandard depen-
For modeling Dutch driving patterns, two joint multivariate dence occurs also in the case of other pairs of variables satis-
distribution functions are needed: the first for a single trip fying an inequality relation: and ; and ;
and the second for a double trip and . To the best of our knowledge, there is no parametric
. copula function available in the literature for the modeling of
A normal/Gaussian copula is a common choice for modeling such a dependence structure. In order to overcome this problem,
the dependence structure between variables. In order to find the normal copula function with the so-called conditional sam-
out if the normal copula function is suitable for modeling de- pling is applied. This procedure is based on selecting samples
pendency between the variables representing driving patterns, during the simulation process that satisfy the required relations.
scatter diagrams are considered. In general, it is difficult to ex- For example, the simulation of a single trip would require the
plore the character of the dependence structure using scatters following simulation code:
between the variables in their natural scale due to the influence
of their marginal distributions [14], [20]. Isolating the effects of
the marginal distributions can be achieved by ranking the data
or, in other words, by transforming the random variables to uni-
form distributions. In this new uniform domain, the character of
while do
the relationship can be revealed. Fig. 5(a) presents the scatter di-
agram of the ranked variables and . It can be observed that
the points are distributed quite uniformly with a slightly higher
density on the diagonal intersecting zero point which conforms
to a low respective correlation coefficient in the matrix. In end while
this case, lack of any significant tail dependence makes the ap-
plication of this copula function appropriate. The granular na- where is a coefficient matrix of a normal copula function
ture of the plotted data can be explained by a tendency of re- for single trips (more details are given in the rest of the paper).
spondents to round the distance traveled as well as the arrival Fig. 6(a) presents the scatter diagram of the ranked simulated
time. variables and . Although the scatters of the ranked original

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1964
and ranked simulated data look alike, the latter might not sat-
isfy the requirements of the copula function, i.e., the uniformly
distributed margins. As a consequence there is a risk that the
distribution of the simulated and original variables might not
fully comply. This side effect can be investigated by exploring
the quantile–quantile (Q-Q) plots of the simulated and original
data. Fig. 6(b) presents the Q-Q plot for the original and simu-
lated variable , which is found to have the most severe devi-
ations among all of the considered variables representing single
as well as double trips. We can see that the difference between
distributions is rather insignificant.
Denoting CDFs of , respectively,
the normal copula is defined as
where are realizations of the uniform variables
on the interval , respec-
tively, denotes standard normal cumulative distribution and
the coefficient matrix of the copula function, which is the
product moment correlation matrix between standard normal
variables . where , denote the start time and end time of a trip, respec-
When modeling dependent random variables using a normal
copula function, the following steps of the joint normal trans-
form methodology [20], [21] should be followed.
Step 1) Transform random variables , trip before the vehicle’s battery became fully charged after the
to uniforms using their CDFs:
Step 2) Transform uniform variables to
normal variables using inverse standard normal
distribution : During the first day, it is assumed that a car starts its h2h trip
Step 3) Estimate product moment correlation be-
tween normal variables . Simulate
from multivariate standard normal
distribution with correlation .
Step 4) Transform the simulated values back to the original
domain by applying standard normal CDF and the
inverse of the respective CDF as follows:
. currence of their respective h2h trips, i.e., 78% and 22%. These
IV. EV SIMULATION
Here, the models representing driving patterns are combined
with the battery characteristics to create a Monte Carlo simula-
tion of the electricity demand due to electric cars.
In order to perform the simulation of commuting behavior,
the two joint multivariate distribution functions and are
built up using normal copula functions and , respec-
tively, and the marginal empirical distribution functions. For
this, parameters of the copula functions and are estimated
by means of the maximum-likelihood method. These coefficient
matrices have similar values to the rank correlations computed
in the previous section. The copula coefficient is given as
(3)
Simulating a person’s commuting plans involves first the deci-
sion if he/she will travel during a day and, second, how many
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2012
h2h trips will he/she have. The probability that a person does
not travel during one day can be computed from the transporta-
tion dataset, as respondents were obliged to report lack of com-
muting as well. According to the survey, 17% of the drivers do
not commute at all during a day. We assume that a person who
commutes makes either a single or a double h2h trip. Based on
the figures presented in Section II-A, there is 78% probability
for a single h2h trip and 22% for a double h2h trip. Thus, the
use of distribution functions and will be determined by
these probabilities.
The state of charge of a battery (SoC) is an available battery
capacity at a given moment expressed as a percentage of the
total capacity. A linear relationship between SoC at the begin-
ning of charging and the distance traveled since the last charging
time is applied, as in [6]. Since, in this procedure, the idea of
fully charged battery at the beginning of charging is not adopted,
the formula for the initial SoC is
(4)
tively, is the distance traveled in between, and denotes an
EV’s driving range. The SoC of a battery at the beginning of
a trip might be lower than 100% if a person starts a
last trip. In this way, the initial SoC depends not only on the dis-
tance traveled since the last charging but also on the charging
history.4
The simulations are performed for two consecutive days.
with a fully charged battery. Only the results from the second
day are used to calculate the EV’s load. This removes the
effect of the initial assumption about the initial state of charge,
leaving only the desired random distributions.
At the beginning of the simulation procedure for an EV, the
decision is made whether the driver will commute during the
first day and the second day. The driving patterns are simulated
using distributions and based on the probability of oc-
driving patterns have to satisfy the logical requirements (see
Section III-C) so the start-time of a trip cannot exceed end-time
of a trip. The initial SoC is computed at every home-arrival-time
using (4). Then, by applying the charging profile given in Fig. 1,
the electricity demand is derived per each hour. In order to com-
pute total power demand due to a number of EVs, the simulation
procedure is run for each EV, and the individual hourly power
demands are added up.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
In order to analyze the scenario of one million EVs, the Monte
Carlo simulation algorithm is run for 1000 EVs and the resulted
load is scaled up accordingly. In Section V-A, we elaborate on
the daily load power curve of the EVs for different levels of
range anxiety. Sections V-B and V-C present one of the possible
4In real life, the SoC would also depend on a vehicle speed and on a driving
mode (urban/highway) but, due to the lack of data, they could not be taken into
account.
LOJOWSKA et al.: STOCHASTIC MODELING OF POWER DEMAND DUE TO EVS USING COPULA
Fig. 7. Power demand due to one million EVs under the scenario of uncon-
trolled domestic charging. The solid line together with the uncertainty is for the
case when commuters plug in the vehicles just after arrival at home. The line
marked with stars is for the case assuming that commuters would charge the ve-
hicle if the SoC is less than 50% or if there is not sufficient energy in the battery
for the next trip.
applications of the methodology: examining the effect of the EV
load on the national electricity demand.
A. Load Due to EVs
A worst case scenario referred to in the literature [6] is that
of uncontrolled domestic charging (no price incentives for
off-peak charging). In this scenario, people would tend to start
charging their vehicles as soon as they arrive home, i.e., during
peak hours for the system. As shown in Fig. 3, drivers arrive
at different times of the day, thereby their electricity demand
is going to be present throughout the entire day instead of a
few particular evening hours. The load due to one million EVs
is presented in Fig. 7 for two cases: commuters plug in the
vehicles just after arrival at home and the case assuming that
commuters would charge the vehicle if the SoC is less than 50%
or if there is not enough energy in the battery for the next trip.
The simulation procedure is run 100 times in order to show the
uncertainty in the EVs’ power demand. These 100 simulations
can be considered as the simulation of the load for 100 different
days. We can see that under the basic principle of Monte Carlo
simulation, uncertainty propagation, the resulted shape of the
power curve takes after the distribution of the arrival time of a
h2h single trip (see Fig. 3). Furthermore, the uncertainty range
varies depending on the hour. The highest uncertainty occurs
when the load has peaks: around 7 pm, 1 pm, as well as around
midnight.
The maximum average load of 0.84 GW is reached at hour 19.
It could seem that this is a quite low value taking into account the
fact that a relatively high percentage of people arrive at home
around 6 pm and they mostly charge at 6.5 kW power level.
Nevertheless, the power demand at a given hour depends not
only on the fraction of cars that arrived before that hour but also
on their initial SoC, related to the distance traveled, which de-
termines the length of time a car stays plugged in to the system.
In Fig. 4, we see that most people tend to have short trips, and,
as a consequence, the charging takes relatively little time. The
average distance traveled for single as well as double trips is
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1965
approximately 26 km. Using (4) and the charging profile of the
Nissa Altra (see Fig. 1), this leads to an average charging time
of 1.16 h to the full capacity.5
The so-called range anxiety is considered as one of the major
factors that could limit the wide-scale adoption of electric vehi-
cles. The solid line in Fig. 7 represents the load power curve for
the highest level of the range anxiety, so electric drivers plug
in their vehicles every time they arrive home no matter how
high the initial SoC is. Assuming a maximum driving range of
130 km, the average distance of 26 km traveled by EVs users
is equivalent to only 20% of a battery discharge. Therefore, a
fully charged battery of the Nissan Altra EV can serve much
more than the energy needed to satisfy the usual driving habits
of the potential EVs’ users. Because frequent charging impacts
the battery lifespan, commuters might prefer to charge the bat-
teries only if the SoC gets below a certain threshold. In Fig. 7,
we can see the load power curve for the case when the batteries
get charged if the initial SoC is lower than the threshold of 50%
or if the battery SoC is too low for the next planned trip. Al-
though, in this situation, about 66% fewer cars will contribute
to the electricity demand, the load due to EVs does not decrease
significantly. For example, the peak load attains 0.71 GW—only
15% less than the base case. Attention should be drawn to the
increased frequency of the long charging times. The average
charging is equal now to 3.1 h, which is almost three times more
than previously. In consequence, this increases the electricity
demand per vehicle and also explains the power curve shifting.
B. Results for Different Market Penetration Levels
One million EVs will correspond to approximately 10%
market penetration in 2020 in The Netherlands [15]. For the
purpose of examining the cumulative effect of the load due
to EVs on the system, the computed EVs’ load is added to a
predicted national demand profile for the year 2020. Since the
worst case study is usually of the highest interest [7], the load
forecasts are computed by applying an annual average growth
rate of 2% [12] to the daily load curve [13] with the highest
hourly peak recorded in the year 2010 in The Netherlands,
which occurred on December 1st. Fig. 8 presents the results
for 10% as well as for 20% penetration levels corresponding
to two million EVs. It appears from the figure that the winter
load peak increases by 3.4% and 6.8% in the case of 10% and
20% penetration levels, respectively. Moreover, the highest
percentage increase takes place at hour 19 and is equal to
3.9% and 7.8% for the respective penetration levels. The 90%
confidence interval for the peak load value in the case of 10%
is (23.09,23.28) GW and (23.76, 24.14) GW for the 20%.
The results in the related literature vary depending on the data
for driving patterns, battery characteristics, market penetration
levels, total system load shape, and so on [7], [8] [6]. For ex-
ample, a similar study for the U.K. system [7] reveals a rela-
tively lower increase of the evening peak electricity demand be-
cause of an almost two times lower charge rate and the driving
patterns utilized [9]. In studies considering distribution systems,
a higher load increase may be reported due to the higher pene-
tration levels for the specific part of the system but also by the
5To obtain these average values, it was assumed that EVs start a trip with a
full battery.
1966
Fig. 8. Total electricity demand of The Netherlands for the year 2020 with
load due to one million EVs (10% penetration level) and two million EVs (20%
penetration level) under the uncontrolled domestic charging scenario.
Fig. 9. Total electricity demand of the Netherlands of the year 2020 and load
due to EVs under price incentives scenario. Discontinuous line represents the
load 2020 with EVs load under the TOS price tariff when the EVs start charging
immediately after the cheap tariff starts. The total load curve under the scenario
of price incentives with uniformly distributed charging-start-time is presented
using the line with stars.
consideration of the present base load demand instead of the fu-
ture [6].
C. Results for Price Incentives
In order to encourage commuters to recharge vehicles during
off-peak hours, price mechanisms in the form of time-of-use
(TOS) electricity tariffs can be employed [8]. A high electricity
price is defined in the interval 8 am–9 pm and a cheap electricity
price during the rest of the day. The simulation procedure as-
sumes that drivers have information regarding the next trip they
are going to make. Thus, the time a vehicle is connected to the
grid might occur in the interval defined by the time of arriving
home and the departure time of the next trip. Whereas the latter
two are simulated using the presented method, the time a vehicle
gets connected to the grid depends on a price incentive scenario.
The procedure assumes that commuters behave rationally and
they charge during the expensive tariff only if it is necessary. In
the latter case, only the amount of energy needed for the next
trip is withdrawn.
In Fig. 9, the load for the year 2020 under the scenario with
the TOS price tariff is presented. In this scenario, all of the elec-
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2012
tric cars awaiting the cheap tariff start charging immediately
when it begins, causing a high peak at 10 pm.6 The load due
to EVs increases the system load at 10 pm by 1.16% and is only
580 MW lower than the winter load peak at 6 pm. In conse-
quence, this type of delayed charging, although prevents the in-
crease in the winter peak, creates an additional coexisting peak.
From the power system point of view the most optimal charging
strategy would utilize the low cost off-peak energy so, in other
words, would fill in the total load “valleys.”
A high percentage of vehicles finish their last h2h trip in a
given day before 9 pm. For them, it is not absolutely necessary
to start charging exactly when the cheap tariff starts. In this case,
the charging might be initiated at any time between 9 pm and the
minimum of the start-time of the next trip and the 8 am of the
next day. For the purpose of modeling such a charging behavior
a uniform probability function is applied. The intervals on which
uniform distributions are defined depend on the arrival time and
the start-time of the next h2h trip. For example, for modeling
charging-start-time of an EV which arrived home before 8 am,
a uniform distribution on the interval 8 am is
applied, where denotes the departure time of the next trip.
Similarly, for an EV arriving before 9 pm, a uniform distribution
defined on 9 pm 8 am is used, and so on. In Fig. 9,
the total load curve under the scenario of price incentives with
uniformly distributed charging-start-time is presented. It can be
observed that the load due to EVs fills in the load valleys much
more optimally than in the previous case.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This paper presented a Monte Carlo simulation approach for
the derivation of the system load due to EVs based on a model
representing real commuting patterns. Since the model vari-
ables are characterized by a stochastic behavior and are corre-
lated, a multivariate distribution function was built by means
of copula function and the respective marginal empirical dis-
tributions. Subsequently, the simulated single and double h2h
trips were combined with a typical EV charging profile, which
in turn allowed the computation of the hourly system load. The
simulation procedure was used to derive the electricity demand
of different EVs market penetration levels and study their cu-
mulative impact in the Netherlands in year 2020. Moreover, by
applying price incentives the load shifts towards off-peak hours
were analyzed.
The results indicate that in the fixed electricity rate environ-
ment, both market penetration levels considered contribute to
the increase in the total peak load in The Netherlands in 2020.
Taking into account the uncertainty in the EVs’ electricity de-
mand, 1.72 GW is the maximum increase during the peak hour
caused by the EVs. Since local problems might occur due to con-
centration of EVs in the specific parts of the system, a day/night
electricity tariffs were considered. It is shown that such a tariff
structure can lead to the occurrence of an additional peak in the
total load if all awaiting EVs start charging when the cheap tariff
begins. Consideration of uniform distribution, i.e., assuming
that there is no underlying mechanism making them charging at
a specific time, distribute the EVs load in a more optimal way.
6The calculation method for the 24 load values is based on integrating the EV
battery profiles over the preceding hour.
LOJOWSKA et al.: STOCHASTIC MODELING OF POWER DEMAND DUE TO EVS USING COPULA
This only demonstrates that the simulation method is flexible
enough to handle any way of choosing the time of charging. If
a dispatch model is applied, the time of charging can be chosen
in an optimal way for the system.
In this paper, the aggregation of individual load on a national
level was analyzed. Due to the large fleet size considered, the un-
certainty contribution from EVs is decreased. Since the method-
ology has the property of scalability, different fleet sizes can be
studied as well. It is expected that small vehicle fleets will be
characterized by a high load uncertainty. Part of future work is
to investigate the influence on distribution systems where higher
impacts are expected.
The presented approach is used to study the 2020 scenario
based on the transportation patterns of the current population.
As cities grow over time and roads experience increased de-
mand and pressure, shifts in the transportation behavior can be
expected. In order to derive EVs load of a future population,
expert judgement techniques can be used to adjust the distribu-
tions of the variables, which represent commuting habits, to the
future situation.
The methodology presented in the paper is sufficiently flex-
ible to handle different scenarios for the deployment of EVs
and at the same time captures the involved uncertainty. In fu-
ture work, a power system dispatch model will be used to study
intelligent responses to more advanced price incentives as well
as the EV2G concept. Optimal charging and discharging of EV
will be scheduled based on the constraints derived from the sto-
chastic EV model, like the number of available EVs every hour,
their SoC, their electricity demand, and so on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Dutch Ministry of Trans-
portation and ENTSO-E for providing datasets. The authors
would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for
providing comments that helped to increase the value of this
paper.
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Alicja Lojowska (S’11) received the M.Sc. degree
in applied mathematic from the Delft University of
Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2009, where
she is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in
the Electrical Power Systems group.
Her project focuses on the assessment of role of
electric mobility as an energy storage in future power
systems characterized by a high penetration levels
of wind. The purpose of her project is to develop
methodologies for the operation and planning of
power system with large number of EVs with a
special focus on the EV2G.
Dorota Kurowicka received the Ph.D. degree from
the Delft University of Technology, Delft, The
Netherlands, in 2001.
Since then, she has been with the Delft Institute of
Applied Mathematics, first as an Assistant Professor
and from 2006 as an Associate Professor. Her current
research is carried out in the area of uncertainty and
risk analysis.
1968
Georgios Papaefthymiou (M’03) received the Dipl.
Eng. degree in electrical and computer engineering
from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in
1999, and the Ph.D. degree from Delft University of
Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2007.
He is currently a consultant with the Power Sys-
tems and Markets Group, Ecofys, and a Research As-
sociate with the Power Systems Group, Delft Uni-
versity of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. His
current research interests include modeling of uncer-
tainty in power systems and the planning and opera-
tion of power systems with high penetration of renewables and energy storage,
wind power forecasting, and market participation issues.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2012
Lou van der Sluis (SM’86) was born in Geervliet,
The Netherlands, on July 10, 1950. He received the
M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Delft
University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in
1974.
He joined the KEMA High Power Laboratory in
1977 as a Test Engineer and was involved in the de-
velopment of a data acquisition system for the High
Power Laboratory, computer calculations of test cir-
cuits and the analysis of test data by digital computer.
In 1990 he became a part-time Professor and, since
1992, a Full Professor with the Power Systems Department, Delft University of
Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. He is the author of the books Transients in
Power Systems (New York: Wiley, 2001) and Electrical Power System Essen-
tials (New York: Wiley, 2008).
Prof. van der Sluis is a past convener of CC-03 of Cigre and Cired to study
the transient recovery voltages in medium and high voltage networks. He is cur-
rently a member of Cigre WG. A3–24 on internal arc testing and co-convener
of Cigre WG. C4. 502. to study the interaction between High-Voltage overhead-
lines and underground cables.