OLADE – Organización Latinoamericana de Energía magazine article written by Alejandro Navarro Espinosa, Miguel Angel Díaz Verriera and José Yáñez Castro.
We face the challenge of combating the climate crisis and one of the alternatives to achieve this is the incorporation of electric vehicles, and it is important to understand what their effects will be on the operation of the electricity system, allowing public policy makers to anticipate problems and facilitate their adoption. This research analyzes the effects on the hourly operation of the Chilean Electricity System due to the adoption of electric vehicles, studying their effects on peak demand, on the operation of the rest of the fleet, on operating costs and on the reduction of emissions, carrying out two case studies: adoption with and without load management. The results indicate that managed charging makes better use of the solar resource, providing flexibility to the system to follow the solar ramp and should therefore be encouraged (with charging stations at work and study sites). It is also determined that the electrification of transport does not always lead to a reduction in emissions, due to the potential increase in emissions when producing the energy needed to charge them and that, therefore, it is crucial to make progress in decarbonizing the energy matrix if we really want to think about the electrification of transport.
