National District would need energy adequacy to meet demand for electric vehicles

SANTO DOMINGO. -The Dominican car market is immersed in a transformation as a result of the arrival of Power Plants. This fact goes hand in hand with the energy transition in which the world is located to counteract the dependence of petroleum-derived fuels.

However, in the face of a massive insertion of electric vehicles in the networks of the National District, there would be radical effects in terms of technical losses, voltage drop and current intensity in the power supply of the network and the individual demand of the circuit.

This was determined by the study "Potential energy impact of electric vehicles in the distribution network of the National District, Dominican Republic", which was published in the journal "Science, Engineering and Applications" of Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), and who was in charge of the professors of the Engineering Area Miguel Aybar and Elvin Jiménez, along with the final students of the Electrical Engineering degree, Edison Álvarez, Henry Caraballo, Robinson Gómez, Manny Montero and Israel Soto.

"The maximum demand that would be in the power transformers would cause them to work very close to their nominal power, and in other cases, the demand would exceed the capacity of the transformer," says the study.

Research refers to the distribution network infrastructure of the National District It is not in the capacity to supply the demand produced by electric vehicles, and as their penetration increases so will economic losses, due to current rates in relation to the average price defined by the Dominican Corporation of State Electric Companies (CDEEE).

The circuits evaluated in this research belong to the Distribuidora de Electricidad del Sur (EDESUR), taken for access to information and the simulation platform, which allowed to develop the scenarios of load flows of vehicles in their concessioned distribution networks .

According to statistics from the General Directorate of Customs for 2017, 28 electric vehicles entered the country, and by 2018, another 39.

Recommendations

The study determined that EDESUR must start the processes of readjustment and update of the electric distribution networks, with a view to the process of energy transmission in the electric mobility that is beginning to develop, because several factors are considerably affected by the insertion of electric vehicles from the transportation matrix of the Dominican Republic.

Among the factors is the maximum demand in the power transformers in distribution, the voltage drop in the nodes of the system, the technical losses and the current intensity that circulates through the feeders of the circuits. 

“From the economic point of view and considering the current conditions of the distribution networks, the financial losses of the electricity distribution companies would increase as the demand for electric vehicles increases, this causes the distribution business to be less profitable and demand a reconstruction that reduces the associated technical losses ”, establishes the study.

Clean alternative

Despite this, at present some Dominican financial intermediation entities have opted to provide their customers with clean energy to charge their vehicles, with the installation of photovoltaic charging stations.