Distributed Coordination of Electric Vehicles Providing V2G Services

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose a distributed electric vehicle (EV) coordination management which exploits the potentials of the bidirectional power flow between the grid and the EV. In the literature, the proposed distributed price-based EV coordination mechanisms aiming to achieve a valley-filling concept consider electric vehicles as mere manageable loads, which are served during valley hours given the EV energy requirements and mobility pattern. In this paper, a distributed EV coordination mechanism is proposed that utilizes 1) the flexibility of EV demand in order to efficiently allocate it during the valley period and hours with high distributed renewable energy production and 2) the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) EV capability in order to minimize the network load variance. The aim of the proposed EV coordination mechanism is to: 1) exploit the synergies between the renewable distributed energy resources (DER) and EV charging needs in order to increase the EV/RES penetration level of the grid without the need for further network investments and 2) exploit the bidirectional EV battery operation for more efficient network operation in terms of voltage profile and network losses. The proposed EV coordination mechanism is assessed through simulations of a realistic rural MV distribution network.