IEEE Electrification - September 2020 - 91

quest for addressing environmental concerns, operational
challenges (frequency, voltage, power quality, and ancillary
services), and reliability mandates.
Using cybersecure communication systems, IoT technology, and sophisticated data analytics, customer participation in risk management is within reach. Utilities that
are repositioned as energy advisers to help consumers
save energy and money will see a sustained lift in customer satisfaction. By boosting customer acquisition and
building brand loyalty, utilities can ward off the threat of
a so-called death spiral, where consumers flock to solar
PV and energy storage and leave utilities with huge
stranded costs and no way to make money. At higher
penetrations, innovative intelligent and coordinated
charging/discharging strategies would enable EVs to contribute to mitigate the impact of PV-integration incidents
on the grid. This paradigm could be portrayed as an
exciting time in both electric power systems and the
transportation sector, which would offer extraordinary
potential and significant opportunities for launching
remarkable innovations in synergistic electric and transportation infrastructures.
Utilities must become aggressive with providing storage either at people's homes, directly creating a network
of distributed storages, or have some sort of centralized
storage setup near population centers. With reduced natural gas prices and new reservoirs of shale gas, gas-fired
units have reached a tipping point in favor of their use by
operators to procure, partially, if not totally, the ramping
flexibility of renewable power systems. We believe that
power utilities, rather than squander their energies on
developing defensive strategies to resist the surge of solar
PV integration, should pour those efforts into figuring out
how to adapt to the coming new world. They need to
introduce effective strategies to leverage the aforementioned tools in place, design value-added services to motivate solar-plus-storage penetration, and stay coordinated
with transportation and natural gas sectors.
Several governments, nonprofit organizations, and
business sectors have supported the advancements in EV
technology, consolidated and promoted foundations for
the societal adaptations of EVs, and facilitated a transition
toward the coordination of electricity and transportation
and the electrification of transportation. In addition, several IoT-based services and models have adopted business ventures for promoting electrification, including
navigation packages for charging station locations and
available services; online traffic data and the optimal
routing of EVs to reach charging stations; the payment,
access, and registration services for EV charging; the
installation, operation, and maintenance services for
charging stations; battery-swapping technologies; and
smart grid applications, such as the provision of distribution network demand response, V2V, and V2G. The additional comprehensive strategies applied to technical,
economical, and social processes will continue to provide

the required innovations and alleviate regulatory loopholes and market weaknesses for large-scale EV deployment and act as a viable competitor of gas vehicles.

Acknowledgment
We acknowledge the support of the Deanship of Scientific
Research at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which funded this project under grant RG-10-135-40.

For Further Reading
G. Haddadian, M. Khodayar, and M. Shahidehpour, "Accelerating the global adoption of electric vehicles: Barriers and drivers," Electricity J., vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 53-68, 2015. doi: 10.1016/j.
tej.2015.11.011.
W. Archibald, Z. Li, M. Shahidehpour, S. Johanns, and T.
Levitsky, "Islands in the sun: The solar power deployment initiative at the University of the Virgin Islands," IEEE Electrific.
Mag., vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 56-67, Mar. 2015. doi: 10.1109/
MELE.2014.2380031.
S. Teimourzadeh, F. Aminifar, M. Davarpanah, and J. M.
Guerrero, "Macroprotections for microgrids: Toward a new
protection paradigm subsequent to distributed energy
resource integration," IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. 10, no. 3, pp.
6-18, Sept. 2016. doi: 10.1109/MIE.2016.2569620.
T. Ding, Q. Zhou, and M. Shahidehpour, "Impact of
COVID-19 on power system operation planning," IEEE Smart
Grid Newsletter, May 2020. [Online]. Available: https://smartgrid
.ieee.org/newsletters/may-2020/impact-of-covid-19-on-power
-system-operation-planning
Z. Li, M. Shahidehpour, and X. Liu, "Cyber-secure decentralized energy management for IoT-enabled active distribution networks," Modern Power Syst. Clean Energy, vol. 6, no. 5,
pp. 900-917, Sept. 2018. doi: 10.1007/s40565-018-0425-1.
S. Salehkalaibar, F. Aminifar, and M. Shahidehpour,
"Hypothesis testing for privacy of smart meters with side
information," IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 2059-
2067, Mar. 2019. doi: 10.1109/TSG.2017.2787838.
"Electric vehicle sales: Facts & figures," Edison Electric
Inst., Washington, D.C., Apr. 2019.

Biographies
Farrokh Aminifar is with the Robert W. Galvin Center
for Electricity Innovation, Illinois Institute of Technology,
- hicago.
C
Mohammad Shahidehpour is with the Robert W. Galvin
Center for Electricity Innovation, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. He is also with King Abdulaziz University,
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Ahmed Alabdulwahab is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering and is affiliated with the Renewable Energy Research Group, King
Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Abdullah Abusorrah is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering and is affiliated with the Renewable Energy Research Group, King
Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Yusuf Al-Turki is with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia.

IEEE Elec trific ation Magazine / S EP T EM BE R 2 0 2 0

https://smartgrid.ieee.org/newsletters/may-2020/impact-of-covid-19-on-power-system-operation-planning https://smartgrid.ieee.org/newsletters/may-2020/impact-of-covid-19-on-power-system-operation-planning https://smartgrid.ieee.org/newsletters/may-2020/impact-of-covid-19-on-power-system-operation-planning

IEEE Electrification - September 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification - September 2020