Abstract
The growing penetration of distributed renewable energy sources (RES) together with the increasing number of new electric vehicle (EV) model registrations is playing a significant role in zero-carbon energy communities’ development. However, the ever-larger share of intermittent renewable power plants, combined with the high and uncontrolled aggregate EV charging demand, requires an evolution toward new planning and management paradigms of energy districts. Thus, in this context, this paper proposes novel smart charging (SC) techniques that aim to integrate as much as possible RES generation and EV charging demand at the local level, synergically acting on power flows and avoiding detrimental effects on the electrical power system. To make this possible, a centralized charging management system (CMS) capable of individually modulating each charging power of plugged EVs is presented in this paper. The CMS aims to maximize the charging self-consumption from local RES, flattening the peak power required to the external grid. Moreover, the CMS guarantees an overall good state of charge (SOC) at departure time for all the vehicles without requiring additional energy from the grid even under low RES power availability conditions. Two methods that differ as a function of the EV power flow direction are proposed. The first SC only involves unidirectional power flow, while the second one also considers bidirectional power flow among vehicles, operating in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) mode. Finally, simulations, which are presented considering an actual case study, validate the SC effects on a reference scenario consisting of an industrial area having a photovoltaic (PV) plant, non-modulable electrical loads, and EV charging stations (CS). Results are collected and performance improvements by operating the different SC methods are compared and described in detail in this paper.
Highlights
Renewable energy sources (RESs), together with electric vehicles (EVs), constitute one of the main points in the green energy shift toward a less carbon-dependent society (Directorate-General for Climate Action (European Commission), 2019)
From multivariate analysis on 1d-optimized charging management systems (OCMSs) performance, the best results were achieved calling off the β coefficient weight when h 0
In the context of energy districts presenting a growing penetration of RES and EVs, this paper proposed two novel EV charging management systems able to operate in smart charging (SC) mode, suitable for working place parking lots or similar scenarios
Summary
Renewable energy sources (RESs), together with electric vehicles (EVs), constitute one of the main points in the green energy shift toward a less carbon-dependent society (Directorate-General for Climate Action (European Commission), 2019). On this matter, particular attention is dedicated to the growing context of positive energy districts (PEDs) to reduce carbon emissions coming from urban areas (Hinterberger et al, 2020; Tuominen, 2020; Rancilio et al, 2021). A similar paradigm can resemble a net-zero-energy community (ZEC) where renewable energy matches electrical loads, thermal energy consumption, and EVs charging demand (Dogan et al, 2015; Lopes et al, 2016; Zatti et al, 2017). The highly sophisticated real-time communication and control backbone necessary for providing grid services has not reached an adequate technological maturity, and only a small number of commercial products are available yet (Thingvad et al, 2016; Zipf and Most, 2016)
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