Electric vehicle charging by use of renewable energy technologies: A comprehensive and updated review

Abstract

The majority of the vehicles in the world consuming fossil fuels that causes emissions of harmful greenhouse gases. In order to mitigate the emissions regarding the transport sector, Electric Vehicles (EVs) have attracted attentions. One of the main concerns in the development of EVs is supply of required power for the charging stations. Renewable energy systems would be clean and attractive options for supply of required power of charging stations. In recent years, several studies have investigated applications of renewable energy systems for charging stations of EV and analyzed different aspects of these technologies. This article reviews the research works on the design, optimization and performance investigation of charging stations coupled with renewable energy systems. Studies on EV charging systems powered by stand-alone or hybrid renewable energy systems are considered in the present article. According to the reviewed works, significant potential of renewable energy systems for supply of charging stations can be concluded. Different factors such as the applied technology and components, meteorological data of the installation site and operating condition influence the performance of these systems. Furthermore, it can be concluded that control design system can influence various aspects of EV charging technologies powered by renewable energy systems such as share of renewables in the grid-connected configurations and performance reliability. Challenges and opportunities associated with the development of these systems are provided in the current works and some recommendations are highlighted for the forthcoming studies and projects.