An integrated traffic and power grid simulator enabling the assessment of e-mobility impact on the grid: a tool for the implementation of the smart grid/city concept

Abstract

To successfully accomplish electro-mobility integration into city traffic, plans for the installation of adequate public charging infrastructures are of utmost importance. The assessment of the effects of the transients caused by the concurrent charging of a large number of electric vehicles to the operating conditions of the power network is part of such a planning development. The paper summarizes some of the work carried out in the authors’ laboratories to accomplish such an assessment. In particular it describes the co-simulation platform integrating a) a mobility simulator suitably adapted to reproduce e-mobility in a typical middle-size Italian city center with b) a dynamic simulator of the power distribution network and with c) a simulator of a UMTS communication network, which has been developed to this purpose. The platform is shown to be able to support the development and performance test of specific countermeasures against power components overload, voltage variations and unbalances.