PhD Defence: Micha Kahlen


In his dissertation ‘Virtual Power Plants of Electric Vehicles in Sustainable Smart Electricity Markets’ ERIM’s Micha Kahlen develops an analytical model that manages carsharing fleets.

Micha defended his dissertation in the Senate Hall at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Tuesday, 15 September 2017 at 13:30. His supervisors were Prof. Wolfgang Ketter and Prof. Alok Gupta. Other members of the Doctoral Committee are Prof. Marc Bettzüge (University of Cologne), Dr John Collins  (University of Minnesota), Dr Jan van Dalen (Erasmus University), Prof. Eric van Heck (Erasmus University), Prof. Thomas Y. Lee (University of California Berkeley).

About Micha Kahlen

Micha Kahlen is an expert on the intersection of information technology and energy systems. In his research he investigates economic aspects of virtual power plants that aggregate storage - of electric vehicles for example - to balance the grid.

Micha is a certified European Energy Exchange trader and won several awards: the second chapter of this dissertation was awarded a $25.000 Siebel Energy Institute Seed Grant and the third chapter won the European Energy Exchange (EEX) 2017 Excellence Award. Micha presented his work at top international conferences such as the Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), and published in the journal Applied Energy.

Born on the 3rd of December 1987, Micha grew up in Aachen, Germany, and volunteered in an institution for mentally disabled people in Israel after high school. Afterwards, he studied BSc International Business Administration (IBA) at the Erasmus University which he finished cum laude and where he participated in the Erasmus Honours Programme. He holds an MSc in Business Information Management, which he graduated cum laude with the highest GPA of 120 students in the core curriculum. After graduation, he worked as a consultant at Capgemini and did the project management of a €2 million data-warehouse project at the largest Dutch pension fund APG. Micha did his PhD in the Department of Technology and Operations Management at the Erasmus University. He taught his knowledge on software engineering to more than 300 Business Information Management master students as lead instructor for the course Designing Business Applications in 2015/2016 and in 2016/2017. His promoter is Prof.dr. W. Ketter and his co-promoter is Prof.dr. A. Gupta from the University of Minnesota. During his PhD Micha was also a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley.

Thesis Abstract

The batteries of electric vehicles can be used as Virtual Power Plants to balance out frequency deviations in the electricity grid. Carsharing fleet owners have the options to charge an electric vehicle's battery, discharge an electric vehicle's battery, or keep an electric vehicle idle for potential rentals. Charging and discharging can be used to provide reliable operating reserves.

We develop an analytical model that manages carsharing fleets. On the one hand, the energy in the batteries of an electric vehicle can be made available to the grid as operating reserves. On the other hand, the electric vehicle can be made available for rental, where the location within the city matters: drivers want a car to be close to their place of departure or arrival. The model can also be used by Transportation Network Companies such as Uber to preposition their vehicles conveniently in a city or optimize zonal pricing.

To validate our model we develop a Discrete Event Simulation platform. We calibrate this simulation with locational information (GPS), rental, and charging transactions of 1,500 electric vehicles from the carsharing services Car2Go (Daimler) and DriveNow (BMW) over several years. We investigate the influence of the charging infrastructure density, battery technology, and rental demand for vehicles on the payoff for the carsharing operator and make an international comparison between the USA, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark. We show that Virtual Power Plants of electric vehicles create sustainable revenue streams for electric vehicle carsharing companies without compromising their rental business.

Photos: Rick Keus