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The Resilient Grids Team at SFU’s School of Sustainable Energy Engineering (SEE) has been collaborating with SFU Surrey’s Facilities Services and SFU Parking & Sustainable Mobility Services to investigate the impact of electric vehicle (EV) charging to the electrical grid. 

Using the EV chargers in the SRYE parking lot, researchers charged 12 different EV’s and monitored them to create an open-access dataset available to other researchers in the industry. Isla Ziyat, the PhD candidate leading the project under the supervision of Dr Patrick Palmer, hopes that this EV charging dataset will help guide new research in the field and enable the integration of more EV charging while maintaining a resilient and reliable grid for everyone. 

“Although EV’s are gaining popularity very fast, especially in cities like Vancouver, utilities and researchers are trying to anticipate the impact this will have on our electrical grid. Real data is essential to study the behaviour of EV charging, however very little EV data currently exists in the public domain,” said Isla. “The hope with this study, is to provide a dataset for the charging behaviour of popular EV’s that can be used for research studies and grid planning to ensure that we can support the transition towards EV’s without putting our electric grid at risk."

SFU Surrey’s Facilities Services oversees the maintenance of campus lands, buildings, teaching, research and community engagement spaces that support the faculty, staff, and student activities.

“The opportunity to assist in the research Isla was conducting, and to learn more about the intersection of infrastructure management and sustainable transportation, was rewarding,” added Mike Devolin, Associate Director, Facilities Services at SFU’s Surrey Campus. “Partnerships with students, such as this, can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes that advance research and foster innovation.”

SFU Parking & Sustainable Mobility Services is responsible for meeting the University’s Scope 3 Emissions target of reducing GHG emissions from commuting by 25% by 2025 as well as the implementation of SFU’s EV Charging Hub strategy which would see SFU installing 174 EV charging ports by 2030 across both the Burnaby and Surrey campuses. 

“We are always excited to be able to meld the operational and research sides of the institution,” says David Agosti, Director of SFU Parking & Sustainable Mobility Services. “Working with the professors and students in SEE has allowed us to look at impacts to the grid, consumer behaviour and adoption of EVs and EV Charging, and give us the information we need to make decisions towards a sustainable transportation future.”

This project is funded by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) under project Evid-3001 named Tap&Go Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Demonstration.